#it’s so weird cos my sex drive is the same but my desire to go out with anyone or sleep with anyone is at an all time low

[rowanhoney]

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[chicgeekgirl89]

The Fifteen Minutes After

Fandom: 911 Lone Star

Characters: Carlos Reyes, T.K. Strand

Rating: EXTREMELY T

Summary: "It felt like a challenge. And the answer was no. Carlos absolutely could not handle whatever was going on right now, hence why they were about to walk into his home and do whatever it was you did with a one night stand you picked up at the bar."

A/N: "Yes, I recall the fifteen minutes after we met." Since we didn't get to see any of those fifteen minutes I have filled in the blanks. Episode tag for 1.01. Huge shoutout to @bluenet13 who basically deserves a co-writer credit at this point because I literally can’t post without her.

Read it on AO3

Captain Strand’s son was…not a good dancer. Carlos had to bite his lip to keep from laughing as he watched the other man attempt to shimmy and follow along with the steps. It was adorable. Incredibly, wonderfully adorable. And no matter how bad his hip shaking was, Carlos still found him incredibly attractive.

Also, he should probably introduce himself so he could stop referring to him as ‘Captain Strand’s Son’. “I’m Carlos, by the way,” he said as they turned to the left and then to the right.

“T.K.,” he said, flashing him a ridiculously cute smile.

T.K.? Well that was different. Carlos would have pegged him as more of a Ryan or a Chris, but T.K…he liked it. He liked him a lot. 

“Does that stand for something?” he asked, kicking out his feet in time with the music.

“Yep.” T.K. gave him another sassy smile that said he would probably have to work to get the answer. 

The dancers turned to face the back wall and Carlos turned with them. When he turned back he found T.K. checking out his ass. His eyes slid up to meet Carlos’ and he didn’t look in the least bit sorry to have been caught. “Like what you see?” Carlos asked, flashing a smile of his own.

Like what you see? Who the hell was he tonight? Carlos was a confident guy, but he wasn’t usually so cocky with people he’d just met. His mother had raised him with manners. All of which had apparently gone out the window the second he got an eyeful of T.K. Strand.

“Not bad,” T.K. said, his eyes full of laughter and…a little bit of desire? Maybe? Was Carlos reading that right? God, he’d been out of the dating game too long, he couldn’t even tell anymore.

“Not bad?” he repeated.

“You heard me,” T.K. said with a smirk. 

Carlos felt himself growing tongue tied. Yet another thing that didn’t typically happen. He was a controlled guy. Confident. Not falling all over himself over a guy he’d known for all of five minutes. What the hell was wrong with him?

“It’s just kind of hard to tell,” T.K. said leaning close to him, “with your jeans on.”

If Carlos had been sipping a drink he would have choked. As it was he missed a step and nearly stumbled into the woman next to him. “Sorry,” he apologized as the song ended and the crowd shifted around him.

By the time he looked up again T.K. had moved back to the bar, but his eyes were still on Carlos, who found himself walking toward him as if pulled by a magnet, butterflies fluttering in his stomach. He absolutely had not come here tonight looking for a hookup. He’d just come to hang out with Michelle. He hadn’t even thought about the hot firefighter from the call earlier. And he definitely hadn’t been hoping he would see him again sometime.

He was halfway back to T.K. when his path was blocked by Michelle. “Hey you need a drink?”

“Uh, no, I’m good,” Carlos said, looking past her to where T.K. leaned against the bar top, a smirk all over his face, clearly having clocked the situation. 

Michelle peered at him closely. “You okay? You look a little flushed.”

“What?” Carlos snapped his eyes back to her. “Yeah, yes, I’m fine. It’s just hot in here.”

His eyes found the bar again, but T.K. had disappeared and Carlos felt something akin to panic as he scanned the room trying to find him. Which was ridiculous. Because they didn’t even know each other. At all. 

“You sure you’re okay? You’re acting strange,” Michelle said skeptically.

“I—yes.” Carlos caught a glimpse of T.K. headed out the front door. “I’ll be right back.”

Michelle called something after him but Carlos was already gone, pushing through the crowd to the front of the Honky Tonk. 

The night air was cool against his burning cheeks as he searched the parking lot for T.K. “Well fancy meeting you out here,” said a voice to his left and Carlos pivoted to find T.K. sitting on top of the low porch railing that ran along the front of the building, half hidden in the shadows.

“Are you leaving?” Carlos asked, trying to keep his tone casual even as desperation filled him. He didn’t want this man to go. For a thousand reasons he couldn’t even explain.

“No, I was waiting for you,” T.K. said, taking a step forward. 

Carlos’ breath left him in a rush and before he could even think he was moving, crashing into T.K., lips seeking, hands fumbling.

It was intense. T.K. tasted like spice and mint and a little bit of smoke. And Carlos wanted more. So, so much more. He was used to being the one in control, but T.K. met and matched his every move, parting his lips, hands sliding under his shirt, bodies bumping up against each other.

Carlos moved to T.K.’s neck and smiled when the other man let out a groan, his fingers fisting in the fabric of Carlos’ shirt. His hips bucked against Carlos’ and Carlos made an appreciative noise of his own. 

His heart was pounding so hard in his chest it was almost painful but he couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. He just wanted more and more and more.

It wasn’t until he felt T.K.’s fingers on his belt buckle that a tiny sliver of reason managed to worm its way through the screaming haze of his libido. He pulled back just a little bit, his breathing so ragged it was like he’d just run a marathon. He felt almost dizzy with want and lust. “Wait, just, hold on,” he rasped.

T.K. made a noise that almost sounded like a whine, but he allowed Carlos to take a half step back. “We can’t—I’m a police officer, I can’t hookup with you out here like this.”

“Are you sure?” T.K. asked, lips finding Carlos’ earlobe and Carlos felt his resolve weaken so much his knees almost gave out.

“I—yeah. I mean your entire crew is inside.” Another thought struck him and his eyes grew wide. “Your dad is inside.”

“Maybe we should get out of here then,” T.K. said, his voice low and full of sex.

Yes, yes, that was a thing you could do, right? They didn’t have to stay here, they could go somewhere else. “My place or yours?” Carlos asked.

“Yours,” T.K. said immediately. He seemed to realize he’d spoken too quickly and looked a little bashful. “I uh, I currently live with my dad.”

Well that was fucking adorable. How could this man be so cute and so sexy at the same time? It didn’t seem possible.

“No shame in that,” Carlos said. “I lived with my parents until I graduated from the police academy.”

How had they gone from pawing at each other to such easy and practical conversation? Carlos felt like his head was spinning. T.K. smiled and adjusted his shirt so he looked slightly less rumpled. “Just uh, just give me a minute?”

“Yeah, sure, of course, take your time,” Carlos said immediately.

T.K. looked him up and down and let out a breath, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He disappeared inside and Carlos took a second to try and unscramble his thoughts. He pulled out his phone and texted Michelle. Heading home. Headache.

Seconds later a text came back. Really? Okay. Feel better.

Of course she wouldn’t be suspicious. Because Carlos never took guys home. Ever. It was a rule. A big rule. Not something that he did. Until tonight. Apparently tonight he did. Oh god, what was he doing?

He was about three seconds away from hopping into the Camaro and driving away as fast and as far as he could when T.K. reappeared, all smiles, his hair still mussed from Carlos’ fingers just minutes before. “You good?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Carlos said. “Yeah let’s go.”

If Carlos had been worried about the twenty minute drive home and whether it would be awkward or a mood killer, he didn’t need to be. T.K. was charming and easy to talk to. He kept the conversation flowing so easily that Carlos felt like he’d known him for years rather than minutes.

“So you have any weird roommates I need to know about or anything?” T.K. asked as Carlos turned onto his street.

“No,” Carlos said. “No roommates. I live by myself.”

“Interesting. Are you sure I’m not a serial killer or something? Isn’t it a little dangerous for you to take me home like this?”

Carlos chuckled. “I’m a cop T.K.”

“Oh, so you think you can handle me?”

It felt like a challenge. And the answer was no. Carlos absolutely could not handle whatever was going on right now, hence why they were about to walk into his home and do whatever it was you did with a one night stand you picked up at the bar.

Carlos glanced over and looked him up and down. “I guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”

The butterflies were back as they walked through the front door. He was completely out of his depth and trying hard as hell not to let it show. He tried to remember everything Adriana and Francesca had told him in vivid, explicit detail about their own one night stands, but everything seemed to have left his brain except for T.K.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked as he turned to lock the front door. “Water or—”

Before he could finish, T.K. was on him, lips against his, hands in his hair, hard and hot and intense. And for all his nerves, now that the moment was here, Carlos didn’t hesitate, grabbing T.K.’s ass and pulling his hips into his own. It felt like his whole body was on fire. Appropriate since the man he was currently making out with was a firefighter.

It seemed like T.K.’s hands were touching him everywhere at once, tangling in his hair, gripping his waist, sliding across the planes of his chest and stomach, and Carlos couldn’t get enough of the way his fingers moved so tenderly across his skin. 

Carlos’ own fingers were making quick work of the buttons on T.K.’s shirt. “Is this okay?” he managed to ask.

T.K. nodded, letting his head fall back against the wall, eyes closed, breathless as Carlos pressed a kiss to his chest for each button he undid. He was holding back a little bit, trying to gauge T.K.; what he liked, what he didn’t, although, so far, it seemed like T.K. pretty much liked everything. “My bedroom’s upstairs,” he mumbled against T.K.’s skin. 

“Okay,” T.K. said, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get there, grabbing Carlos’ face and lifting him so their mouths met once more.

His hands moved to Carlos’ belt and this time Carlos didn’t protest as T.K. undid the buckle and then moved onto Carlos’ jeans. He paused briefly, eyes meeting Carlos’. “Yeah?” he asked, searching for consent.

“Yeah,” Carlos replied and T.K. wasted no time undoing the button and the zipper, pushing his jeans down until they hung low on his hips.

Carlos wasn’t sure how they made it up the stairs without dying, both of them half undressed, falling all over each other. When they finally reached his bedroom he felt desire burn down his spine so hot and fast he could hardly stand it. He steered T.K. toward the bed by his hips and gently pushed him down. “Oh so that’s how it is?” T.K. asked with a laugh as Carlos pulled his shirt off.

“Yeah, that’s how it is,” Carlos said as he climbed onto the bed. “Do you think you can handle it?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” T.K. said with a grin.

Time seemed to slip away and before he knew it, it was the early hours of the morning. T.K. was up and pulling on his clothes. “You can stay, you know,” Carlos said, shifting in the bed. “If you want. It’s late.”

“You don’t do this a lot do you?” T.K. asked with a smile.

Carlos barked out a laugh. “Not really.”

Never would be more accurate, but T.K. didn’t need to know that.

“I gotta say I’m surprised. A guy like you,” T.K. let his eyes wander appreciatively over Carlos’ body, “I can’t believe everybody in that bar wasn’t trying to take you home.”

Warmth flooded through him. Was this bliss? It wasn’t love. For sure. You couldn’t fall in love after one heated make-out session and a couple hours of mind-blowingly good sex, right?

“I already called an Uber,” T.K. said. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “This was fun though. We should do it again sometime. Give me your phone, I’ll put in my number.”

Carlos reached for his nightstand but came up empty handed. “I think my phone’s in my pants downstairs.”

T.K. grinned, clearly remembering exactly how those pants had come off. “Do you have a pen?”

Carlos managed to find one and T.K. took it, then reached for Carlos’ hand, carefully writing down his cell number. “Don’t lose it,” he said with a smile.

Carlos would have it tattooed onto his skin if necessary. 

T.K.’s phone buzzed and he looked down. “That’s my ride. No don’t get up,” he said when Carlos began to rise. “I’ll lock the door behind me.”

He leaned over and pressed one more burning kiss to Carlos’ lips. He turned when he got to the doorway, biting his lip and eyeing Carlos critically. “Very nice.”

“What?” Carlos asked in amused confusion, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

“Your ass. Now that I’ve seen it, I can say for sure, it’s very nice.”

T.K. grinned at him and then vanished down the stairs. Carlos snorted and shook his head. He wasn’t sure what the hell had just happened, but whatever it was, he’d liked it. A lot. And he really hoped they would do it again.

[beca-mitchell]

you are my favorite thing (1/1)

Summary: Beca and Chloe find themselves alone in their apartment after the instruction comes to self-isolate. Set pre-PP3. Just pretend PP3 doesn’t exist.

Notes: Apologies for this fic. It stuck with me...and I had to write it before it drove me crazy. I know it's not that good but hopefully it brings a small smidge of levity to your lives. <3 I promise I'm working on other stuff, just haven't been feeling well lately.

Word count: 3.1k

Rated M/E.

Read below or on AO3.

When the announcement came that it would be in everybody’s best interest to self-quarantine and self-isolate, Beca hadn’t really known what to expect. In fact, she feels kind of bad for not taking this more seriously and leaving Chloe to pick up the slack. Chloe, who had been almost zealously preparing for the “worst to come” by her standards.

And now, apparently the CDC’s standards.

With the rampant news updates and social media seemingly tearing itself apart at the seams, Beca kind of wishes she had picked a career that required her to be on her computer less but now as she lugs her two laptops and three pairs of headphones home from the label’s head office in midtown, she supposes that she has no choice.

“Oh good, you’re home,” Chloe says upon seeing her. She reaches out automatically to help Beca with her bags as Beca belabours the fact that they live on the fourth floor of their walk-up. She tries to smile gratefully at Chloe, but Chloe is already pacing across the small kitchen space in front of her.

“No welcome home?” Beca jokes. She shrugs off her blazer and moves towards the rack of clothes so she can hang it up neatly. Chloe quickly places a hand on her chest but before Beca has a chance to squawk indignantly at Chloe’s hand placement (Beca totally doesn’t think it’s nice or whatever...because she doesn’t care), Chloe stares at her seriously.

“Do we have enough groceries?”

“Did you eat all the groceries from two days ago?” Beca asks, confused. She turns on her heel to open the fridge to check. “Nope, we literally have all the food that we still haven’t eaten.”

Chloe slumps, moving to sit at the table instead. “Sorry, it’s just been super hectic today. I know we just went to get stuff, but my parents are stressing me out so much.”

Beca smiles sympathetically. “I get it, my dad was messaging me all day today. I told him it would be fine. It’s just a matter of waiting it out.” Beca injects some optimism into her tone. “Plus, Amy isn’t around this weekend so…” she trails off hoping Chloe will understand.

Chloe brightens. “Trashy television night?”

Internally Beca groans, but the smile on her face is genuine because it’s worth it to see Chloe smile.

— — — — —

So the whole having a crush on your captain/co-captain/best friend/bedmate thing?

Kind of overrated. Beca’s over it—or she wants to be over it.

She wants to stop thinking about how nice Chloe’s smile is or how effortlessly Chloe can lift her when she overenthusiastically hugs Beca.

Or how ridiculously happy Chloe makes her.

All those dumb things and dumb feelings that she never really felt to any extreme or significant levels with Jesse. And definitely not that one night stand after her break-up with Jesse.

It’s just that Chloe had somehow always been there, somehow slipping through the cracks and all the crevices of Beca’s carefully constructed walls—places that Beca didn’t even know were available to fall victim to Chloe’s special brand of love and care.

But if there’s one thing that Beca has come to love about Chloe, it is exactly that care—that specific way Chloe somehow makes her feel like she’s the most cherished person in a room. In the world, maybe.

It’s gross and cheesy.

Beca loves it.

It just kind of sucks that all of this pondering—all the pondering the world, maybe—wasn’t enough for Beca to be wary of what it would mean to be stuck twenty-four-seven in an enclosed space with the girl she’s in love with.

— — — — —

With how busy their lives have been, Beca realizes with a pang in her heart that she really hasn’t had time to just sit down with Chloe and just be. It’s Tuesday and after a weekend spent just catching up with Chloe and meal-prepping for the rest of the week, Beca realizes that this whole situation could be a lot worse.

I’ve missed you, is what she wants to say.

Like most things when it comes to her feelings for Chloe, it just sticks inside her head instead and she settles on saying good morning to Chloe.

“It feels weird,” Chloe admits, sitting down next to Beca on Tuesday morning. She scoots her chair closer to press her cheek against Beca’s shoulder.

Beca scrolls lazily through her social media feeds, a habit she picked up from Chloe. Naturally, her body turns into the warmth offered by Chloe’s close proximity. “What feels weird?”

Chloe sighs. It is a large enough sigh to shift Beca’s shoulder as Chloe moves against her. “Not having work.”

Unlike Beca who was permitted to work from home, Chloe’s supervisor suggested that she just take some time off. It wasn’t like Chloe was really being paid a lot to begin with, as a temporary veterinary assistant, but Beca knows that the blow must be hard on both the financial and emotional level.

“You can be my assistant for the day,” Beca suggests. “I have to finish finalizing a few tracks on this album. You can give me feedback. It’ll just be like the old days. Just, um, don’t tell anybody about it. And no posting on social media.”

Chloe immediately brightens at that, like Beca just offered her the entire world on a silver platter. The kiss that she presses to Beca’s cheek is absolutely worth it.

— — — — —

Chloe is, as Beca has always known, incredibly attentive. She also has no real concept of personal space.

Beca knows however, that if she had bothered to say anything to Chloe about that, Chloe would have backed off years ago, but Beca kind of likes that it’s their thing. Kind of.

So when Chloe leans right over her shoulder to watch her work, Beca says nothing.

Whatever.

This is way better than being stuck in an office.

— — — — —

“Hey,” Chloe says, drawing Beca’s eyes up from her screen. “I’m just going to shower, do you mind.”

Beca shakes her head, no, because she doesn’t mind. Chloe lives here too. Chloe can totally walk around half-naked if she wants. She’s confident about all that. Chloe can toss a towel over her shoulder and hum to herself. Chloe can squeeze Beca’s shoulder in affection. Chloe can step into their dingy bathtub, draw back the curtain and proceed to strip off all her clothes in front of Beca—almost quite literally—and just shower a few feet away from where Beca is accidentally deleting an important layer in her audio editing program.

Chloe can do whatever she wants because Beca and Chloe are roommates and that’s what roommates do.

— — — — —

Chloe doesn’t need to shower every day, Beca’s sure of it.

She’s not really complaining. It’s not like she can even see anything, though the reappearance of her rather vivid sex dreams about Chloe on Thursday night is alarming.

But honestly, Beca’s not really complaining even though she hundred percent moves her seat at the kitchen table on Friday so her back is towards the shower.

She thinks Chloe pouts at her on the way to her shower, but Beca’s too busy renaming arbitrary files on her computer to really pay attention to that.

— — — — —

It’s crazy that it is in these circumstances that Beca is really truly considering that she should just tell Chloe how she feels. It’s just hard, wanting to kiss Chloe all the time. It’s hard because they’re really and truly alone and Beca has nothing to do but stare at Chloe’s stupidly perfect face and her lips and she has to see her sweet smile.

It’s gross. Beca’s gross.

(It also doesn’t help that sometimes she catches Chloe staring back—with the same degree of affection to boot. The same care, affection, and desire in her eyes that Beca knows must be shooting out of her own like fucking spotlights.

But she supposes that she could be imagining it too.)

“Beca?” Chloe asks. “Are you watching?”

Chloe’s voice cuts through Beca’s thoughts gently. Beca gazes up at Chloe who has not moved her attention from the screen. She takes the moment to genty observe the curve of Chloe’s nose. The fullness of her lips. The way her lips gently part as she expels a breath.

“Yeah,” Beca says before slowly dragging her eyes back to the screen with some reluctance.

She’s fucked.

— — — — —

Beca Dude where are you

Fat Amy At a friend’s place, don’t wait up xoxoxo

Beca What???? Come home now Amy?????

— — — — —

“Remember college and how I said I wish I experimented more?”

Beca chokes on her water.

“N...yes? Why?” Beca demands, ignoring the way her heart races. Being in close proximity to Chloe tends to do that to her. Nothing new.

Chloe hums to herself. “Nothing. Just lots of time to think today.”

“Oh,” Beca says. “Okay.” She quickly refocuses on her work.

Chloe sighs and returns to her textbook.

— — — — —

Beca blames the long, extended time spent inside. She kind of forgets that they had dinner plans. Or that she probably should have sent that email to her boss.

It’s so easy to forget that they’ve been confined to their apartment for days, but Beca can’t complain.

Mostly because Chloe’s tongue is in her mouth doing absolutely sinful things.

And well—now they’re kind of tumbling onto their deeply uncomfortable but satisfactory for the moment bed, Beca grunting as her back hits the mattress heavily.

“Sorry,” Chloe pants out, drawing back. “Are you—”

“M’fine,” Beca mumbles, pulling Chloe back down for a kiss. Chloe responds eagerly, not-at-all minding that she had been cut off. Instead, she makes a happy little sound, curving her body neatly into Beca’s. The warmth of Chloe’s body on top of her own is driving Beca crazy—that and the distinct lack of friction between her own legs. “Wait,” Beca says, after pushing lightly at Chloe’s shoulders. “Wait—can you—”

Chloe’s brow furrows. “What is it?”

“Just…clothes,” Beca mumbles.

“Oh!” Chloe grins then. “So forward.”

Beca’s cheeks heat up spectacularly. She both loves and hates that Chloe can still tease her like this, even though they’ve both completely eviscerated whatever fragile lines they had set up in their already-confusing friendship.

Chloe, ever the master of making Beca feel many things at once, doesn’t stop there, however. She smiles, leans back—sits all the way upright for Beca’s viewing pleasure—and pulls off her shirt in a smooth motion that makes Beca’s mouth go dry.

Then, when Beca thinks that it can’t get worse…

“I like it when you’re forward,” Chloe murmurs, leaning back down to cup Beca’s cheeks before kissing her so thoroughly and deeply that Beca thinks she might soak through her jeans completely.

Speaking of her jeans—

Beca whimpers into Chloe’s mouth when she feels Chloe’s thumbs expertly popping open the button on her jeans before Chloe is pulling away again to slide the offending material down her legs. Beca scrambles to sit upright so she can pull off her shirt quickly.

It is all pent-up urgency and flying clothes as Chloe climbs back over her, all messy hair and flawless skin, and pulls her into another sweeping kiss. It ought to be illegal, the way Chloe’s tongue flicks through her mouth, desperately seeking out Beca’s. Chloe somehow has made making out a high-level art form and Beca is only all too willing to pay full price for admission to that particular show.

Beca has imagined this, she would be remiss if she weren’t going to admit it right off the bat. It is just difficult reconciling her imagination with this reality because the reality is making Beca’s imagination look very, very weak.

Chloe’s arms come around her, pressing against the mattress before Chloe is rolling them all at once. Beca groans, moving to straddle Chloe which proves to be a mistake, somewhat, because suddenly she can feel the ripple of Chloe’s stomach—damn abs—right against her soaked center. She bites her lip, leaning back slightly and watching with rapt attention as Chloe follows, folding Beca into her arms again.

“I want you so much,” Chloe rasps, voice hot and low against Beca’s neck. “Like, right now.”

Have me, Beca wants to say. I’m yours.

A whole slew of clichés float through Beca’s mind, but all she manages is a guttural moan because Chloe chooses that mount to eagerly palm Beca’s stiff nipple while sucking a nasty hickey into the side of her neck.

“Was that a yes?” Chloe murmurs.

“Fuck yes,” Beca grits out, holding Chloe’s head against her as Chloe’s kisses descend lower so she can envelop Beca’s neglected nipple in her mouth. The sensation of Chloe’s lips, her tongue, the graze of her teeth—all of it right against Beca’s sensitive flesh.

— — — — —

So how that happened is kind of a long story and it might or might not be Beca’s fault.

The short story is that Chloe wanted to watch a movie and Beca had agreed because movie nights with Chloe usually meant cuddling.

But strange times call for unexpected occurrences, though upon reflection, the build-up had been there all along.

(Literally. For years.)

Beca just didn’t really expect the whole making out thing. And the sex thing.

Oh—

And the whole ‘watching Chloe sleep next to her while she runs her fingers through beautiful red hair to calm herself down because her heart is threatening to burst out of her heart’ thing.

That thing.

— — — — —

“You’re horrible at picking up signals,” is the first thing Chloe says to her when Beca wakes up on a bright and sunny Saturday morning.

“I am,” Beca agrees, rolling into Chloe’s body with no intention of going outside ever again. “But maybe you’re horrible at dropping hints.”

“Maybe,” Chloe murmurs, breath hot against Beca’s mouth.

— — — — —

“So this is week two,” Beca says in the most dramatic voice she can muster. She grins at Chloe’s little delighted giggle as she pulls the sheets over both of their heads. It is early Monday and Beca’s phone has been on silent pretty much all weekend. She and Chloe pretty much only left the bed to shower and eat, both of which were activities that could be pleasantly underscored by sex.

“It is week two,” Chloe echoes, pulling Beca in for a slow, muted kiss. It reminds Beca of the kiss Chloe had woken her up with after their first time—the mild disorientation had faded away quickly.

“Whatever shall we do?”

— — — — —

Beca thinks that morning sex absolutely should be part of her regular routine—no matter the circumstances.

Chloe trails gentle fingers down Beca’s neck, between her breasts. Beca waits with heavy breaths, watching Chloe’s progress as she maps out invisible lines on Beca’s body, like an artist at work. Beca clenches her hands into fists, resisting the urge to pull Chloe into another messy kiss. She kind of likes this slower pace—this care and attention bestowed upon her. Chloe’s eyes are incredibly blue as they track over Beca’s body carefully, like she doesn’t want to miss a thing.

“You’re so…” Chloe trails off, sighing happily as she presses lazy kisses around the curve of Beca’s breast before leaning up to suck gently at her nipple. A familiar sensation now, Beca’s back still arches obediently as her breathing quickens.

She doesn’t need Chloe to finish her sentence. She just needs Chloe to continue whatever she’s doing. Naturally, Chloe settles between her legs after a few more torturous minutes of lavishing attention on Beca’s chest. Beca’s hips rock up impatiently, almost of their own accord. She is wholly aware of how uncomfortably wet she is and she knows she’s going to need another shower, but she doesn’t care about that at the moment. The ache between her legs only intensifies when Chloe’s fingers finally make their way to her aching clit.

“Oh fuck,” Beca mumbles. She slowly moves her hand to tangle her hand in Chloe’s hair, needing to feel Chloe closer on all accounts. She spreads her legs wider to accommodate her lover, heaving a breath when Chloe shifts closer still and leans up to press a kiss against Beca’s neck delicately.

“I think I love seeing you like this the most,” Chloe murmurs.

“Like—how?” Beca squeaks out when Chloe’s fingers press down more firmly against her clit. A soft whine escapes her lips.

“This. Spread open. For me.”

Chloe says that like it is the most natural thing she could say to Beca. She says it like she is simply discussing a reading assignment or that she thinks Beca should add another layer of harmonies.

Not at all like she's describing exactly how much Beca wants her; how wet she is; how much she needs Chloe between her legs before she combusts.

Beca pulls Chloe in for a messy kiss, already aching for Chloe’s tongue in her mouth. Chloe indulges her for a few moments, sweeping her fingers through her wet folds. Up, down. Around.

Beca cries out, muffled against Chloe’s mouth. She rips herself away from their kiss. “Chloe, please. Fuck me.”

Chloe grins and leans back in to nip at her lower lip gently. “I thought I was?”

Beca groans in frustration. Fucking tease. She tightens her legs around Chloe’s waist, moving her hips so that Chloe’s fingers almost slip inside her. At the sensation, her head falls back and she lets out a broken whimper.

“Oh,” Chloe murmurs. “You meant like this.” Chloe gently pushes a finger past her folds and Beca clenches hard around it. Chloe begins a slow rhythm, curling her finger every now and then. “And like this.”

It is such a slow, steady pace that Beca has no real reason to complain. Uncomfortably, her neck arches. She reaches down to grip at Chloe’s wrist with a trembling hand, but she does not stop her. “More,” she whimpers. Begs. “Please, baby, more.”

Chloe seems to perk up at the pet name (or the begging—Beca thinks she should do more research; she can absolutely do more research with all the time in the world at her disposal) and to her credit, she listens to Beca for once. She picks up the pace, this time adding a second finger to join the first. Beca grunts at the fullness, blinking up at the ceiling for a brief moment before she squeezes her eyes shut only to see stars explode behind her eyelids. She grunts again, louder, slackening her grip on Chloe’s wrist. Automatically, her hand drifts to her momentarily-neglected clit and she rubs at it with as much pressure as she dares.

Chloe growls—full-on growls—and nips at her throat before using her free hand to move Beca’s hand out of the way. “I want to,” is all she says when Beca opens her eyes, ready to demand Chloe explain herself.

Oh.

Well, if Chloe wants to do that, Beca isn’t going to stop her. They’ve got weeks to figure it out.

— — — — —

Beca Amy, nvm, you should probably stay exactly where you are Just to be safe yknow thanks

fin.

[m2fjourney]

The First 48 Hours

It's done. I'm out. No, I'm not, maybe I never will be. No, I am out in my head. I have accepted who I really am. Years. Years of denial. Years of thinking it's just a paraphilia. Believing an antiquated theory of transexualism. I can't go back. That moment, feeling myself. The feeling of touching my body and every so briefly feeling it could be who I really am. I've wanted to be a woman as long as I can remember. I hate everything about my body, but I finally just accepted the good feelings with being girly. It sounds facile and condescending, there’s the guilt about it. I know that I have not lived the life to understand what it means to be a woman, but it's who I want to be. I almost cried stepping on the scale because I had lost a pound. Not because I was losing weight, I have tried and failed before, but because it meant something to me. It meant a step towards having the body I want. Shaving and feeling the soft fresh skin without the guilt of it being wrong felt so good. It's not a kink. It's not something I need to hide. And yet, I am out only in my head. I have no idea what will happen next.

I have to tell her. I think she suspects, maybe she knows and knows I have to do it myself. That would be the best outcome. She knows I have never been really happy inside. It comes out in little ways, but I don't know if she can know what I myself only just accepted. It's possible for me to like myself. It's possible for me to do something. It's possible to stop wishing for a miracle that will never happen and just do what I can. The small victories feel so good.

We had sex twice this weekend and that's not happened in an age. I felt so liberated by not feeling like I was pretending. It didn't matter. I am still attracted to her. I don't know what the future will bring. Hormones will probably kill my sex drive at some point. Although in my fantasies I can feel myself penetrated, I have never seen a man that I wanted him to do that. I am not attracted to men though I crave that experience of being a woman. I think there's some compromise if she is open to it, but she may not be. I remember ages ago she said she wasn't attracted to women. I don't know. In some of the fantasies, she says she's trans too and I imagine being with *him* and I can imagine it. We've been married 25 years, we have a life and we know each other. I know how to make her cum. Ironically, my "technique" got better when I started imagining I was sucking her penis when I went down. I've behaved like that for a long time, but it was like psyching myself up for something that I was apprehensive of, not confident. This weekend I felt so much more confidence. It makes no sense. I just, in my head, I am who I am and I feel better. Nobody else knows. I could just stop now and never tell a living soul, but it's different in my head now. I feel happy, finally. The stupid every day annoyances are there, but somehow I am not as angry as I was. I was so so angry for so long. Angry at the world. Maybe this is just euphoria and it will wear off, but I feel like I am in some kind of control of my life.  That control of my future, real control of who I am is exhilarating. I don't know what all led up to this. Some of it is the THC. I did some edibles a month or so ago and the overwhelming physical effect was I felt like I was in a woman's body. I could feel my breasts. As much as I wanted it to be sexual, it was just comfortable. If I could do it without side effects (nausea, dizzyness, hangover) I would probably do it every day, my body felt so normal. But then a couple days ago something happened. It was like flipping a switch from trapped to possibilities. I could see *myself* as a woman, not just as some other woman, but me, my new body. It's like the dreams. I wish I woke up remembering having them more often, but the few times I would have a dream, looking in the mirror and my face subtly changes and I know I am a woman and I wake up happier than I have ever felt in life.

I know none of this is easy. There's people that will hate me for being who I want to be, but that's probably true no matter what I do with my life. My parents will never understand. A few years ago, not many at all, I painted my nails. I don't even remember if it was all of them or just a couple while we were visiting up there. I said I did it because "LOL" but I know it was because it made me feel good, it made me feel pretty. They flipped out like I had told them I was a murderer. Constant "Why, why, why" "It looks ridiculous" made me feel awful. I was a very gown ass adult, but I took it off in disgust. They caught me experimenting as a teen. Wearing women's underwear. Naked except for the underwear and a panty liner (it sounds ridiculous, but it was something that made me feel feminine). Confronted, I talked my way out of it in a way that was all plausible deniability. It was easier on us all if I concocted a story. They bought it or pretended to. Not sure what would have happened if they had not. Probably counseling of their choosing and attempts to further repress my desires. The discovery set me back, but the lack of consequences probably saved me.

I will probably feel like an imposter. I will sometimes probably think I am not a real woman. I lack the lived experience of being a woman. Of having been a girl. But I also lack the same lived experience as any other and certainly any other non-trans person. I never fit in with men or in men's places. I feel like such a fake there. I just nod and have a handful of bland aphorisms about sports. Nothing about sport has ever appealed to me. Nothing about locker room talk appeals. I still like women, but I think I felt violated by men who treat them as conquests. I always wanted to be close to women, to feel things with them, and ultimately I wanted to be them.

I know a lot of people who will support me. I may lose my family and casual acquaintances. I don't really care. I have always had a small social circle. I worry that may affect her more than me. I think there's work friends lurking that are trans-phobes. A former co-worker was openly transphobic and she unfriended her. I wanted her to report her to the hospital. Yeah. This was someone who worked in patient contact at a major hospital and was openly anti-trans on Facebook. Typical right wing bullshit. I knew I didn't like her or her husband from the first (both gun toting reactionaries. He's a cop too, so yeah there's that nice little feeling that the people in power will do all they can to make trans life harder). This whole process though feels so selfish. Like people will ask, "How can he do that to her?" Maybe. I dunno. She may love me enough and be flexible enough to adapt. I really don't know. It's been a long time since anything of that sort came up. She mentions trans issues and people who have transitioned. Is she just making conversation or giving me an opening?

I said I wanted to permanently remove the hair from my back and neck, sort of a safe "I don't need those" stepping stone. She mentioned electrolysis was what they recommend for trans women because it's permanent. I settled on a IPL to try it out on my face and arms. Electro in the future will have to happen. Maybe she knows or suspects. I don't even know how to start that conversation. "Hey, yeah, so great dinner. By the way, I'm trans and I want to transition"

Our anniversary is coming up. We have a bunch of little weekend trips planned and part of me thinks I should tell her then and part of me doesn't want to ruin the trip if she takes it badly. We have relatives that are trans-women and non-binary, so it's something she's familiar with. They're all younger though and not married to her. Her parents will probably say stupid shit, but they will try to understand. It will be cringy, but not awful. I am prepared to just lose my family, maybe I underestimate them but I don't think they have the flexibility to accept it as anything other than weird. However, the advantage of being an adult is that I can just walk away. We are more successful than them, I don’t need anything from them. 

On the other hand, I wake up every morning since I made up my mind feeling good about myself. I have SO far to go to even marginally pass to someone half blind, but I want to try. I want to make the effort. It's like a weight has been lifted.

[dxmedstudent]

As a longterm single person... or a person who was single for long times during parts of my life, I’m usually very onboard with shifting the focus. But it feels like this entire article is a lazy missed opportunity. It somehow manages to alienate me even though I really, really want to be able to agee with it. For a start, the article does nothing to address that yes, society does highly value romantic relationships at the expense of other meaningful relationships, and pressures people - particularly young women, to conform to the expectation to be in one. The expectation to be in a relationship and how we are treated when we’re not in one goes far beyond people valuing sex.  I’ve talked about this at length before, so I’ll skip over that part for now. It doesn’t even touch on how ace or aro people experience such a ban - you don’t have to be in love or having sex to miss a significant other - the key is in the ‘significant’ bit. 

“And while I know there could be some troubling long-term consequences to this legal accident, I can’t help but feel that the frustration of many is misplaced.”

No. This is your first mistake. People are allowed to be frustrated that such a rule renders physically continuing intimate relationships if you live apart illegal.   People are allowed to be frustrated that they can go to primark, risk coronavirus at work, use the tube, but aren’t allowed to hug their GF. Hell, people are allowed to just be annoyed they can’t go to the pub. It might not be a priority, but I wouldn’t write in whining about how other people miss something that I am not personally fussed about. “It means we can’t go to the pub, to a party, or to a friend’s house to sit on the sofa with a bottle of wine laughing our heads off; we can't have our families round for Sunday roast; we can’t even go inside if it starts to rain during one of the permitted back garden gatherings of six.”

But fundamentally, we can have a party. We can see 6 friends or family outside. We can share food with them. We can use the bathroom. We will soon be allowed to start going to establishments to eat and drink. However rather hilariously, the article somehow manages to paint sitting on someone’s sofa as equally (or more) important than romantic and physical intimacy with a life partner. Who cares that some people haven’t been able to see their intimate partner at all, much less so much as hold hands in 3 months, when I wanna sit on someones sofa!

I get it. These rules are still wildly different to our usual lives. You’re right, it sucks that we also can’t enjoy platonic touch. Hugging a friend, patting someone on the back. Just being able to be indoors and have a meal. But the rules let us live out a much closer approximaiton of life with friends - which is a start.  Now, I have friends who run the full tactile spectrum from ‘absolute huggers’ to ‘don’t touch me’. I miss a good hug or just being able to sit beside each other, but for the most part I can easily enjoy most of what I can do with friends under the current rules. Apart from sit around playing board games together, cos you can’t do that 2m apart and it’d be less than ideal to do outside. This has still had a big impact on our social lives - particularly if you live apart from friends as I do. So I feel you. I can’t just up and drive over to most of my friends’, and even if I did, sitting around outside for a couple of hours wouldn’t be with the long trip. When you’re not allowed indoors or to stay the night it makes the kind of socialising many of us do much harder. It’s the same for me seeing my family, too. So I get it. It’s just that being banned from being within 2m of someone has a much bigger impact if you’re in a romantic relationship. Because physicality (and not just sex), and spending lots of time together is a bigger part of the deal when it comes to having a significant other. Many people aren’t overly physically affectionate with friends - I know many people who barely do beyond a handshake or stiff hug - and that’s fine. These laws just take away a much bigger dimension from a romantic relationship, than from most platonic ones.

On the Facebook group I run for single people, those who live alone simply want to know when they will be touched again. And by touch I mean simply a pat on the arm, a cuddle from their mum, their best friend holding their hand. These are simple things, but are so important. They matter to people just as much, if not more, as whether they have a 'significant other' sharing their bed - but you wouldn't know that from the discussion around these new rules.

See, this is important, so maybe lead with this? It’s heartbreaing that many of us effectively have been banned from all human physical contact.  But that doesn’t mean intimate relationships aren’t important to others - and complaining that those people are commenting on how it affects them is misplaced.  Ths is not a competition between whether it’s worse that we can’t hug our friends or our boyfriends. Not being allowed to see an intimate partner is also depriving you of cuddles or simple gestures - a lot more than just sex.And yet the article frequently chooses to frame it as a ban against hookups when it also affects many people in relationships who can’t move in at this point in time. I’ve seen people complain that they can’t spend time with or touch their partners of several years, for example.  But actually, we also shouldn’t have to minimise the importance of sex, even in  a casual setting. So let’s get onto that. “Those grieving for those they've lost to Covid-19, I’m sure, are far more interested in when they can hold their loved ones than when they can next hook up. Headlines about sex bans must feel particularly grating to them.” News just in: holding your loved ones and sex are mutually exclusive. You know, if  any of us lose loved ones, we’ll be heartbroken and it will suck whether we can’t hug our sister who lives far away, or our boyfriend who we don’t live with. Please don’t use cheap emotional blackmail to suggest people can’t miss both or that both can’t be one and the same if you love your partner. I’d argue this probably says a lot about what the author thinks about relationships or sex, but I hope it’s just poor writing. “The uproar about the apparent ban on sex also plays into the rather sixth form idea that absolutely everyone is having loads of sex all the time. God forbid a few of us have to wait a few months for our next chance.” Also, tangential much? People aren’t upset because they can’t go 3 months without sex, they are upset because 3 months in a pandemic without any intimacy with a loved one is hard, especially if you’re in an intimate relationship that got suddenly cut off. Because that person and their support and cuddles is particularly important to you.  This is also a weird double standard: It’s apparently OK to be devastated because nobody can give you a hug, but god forbid you are sad about being entirely separated from a significant other against your will. Also, apparently we’re all fantasists playing up how much sex we’re having. I don’t understand why this article comes across as so weridly moralising, but it does. Reducing sex to hooking up is moralising behaviour: and as someone with an interest in sexual health I have to state that it’s not up to you to put a value on sex for someone else. I don’t like it being illegal for me to hug my sister, or ... yes, have sex with my boyfriend-  or you know, hug him too since this isn’t about sex alone. But I’m not here to police if someone doesn’t like the rules because they just miss sex. Whoever they have sex with. Sex is a fundamental part of being human for most people. Intimacy is core to many  people’s mental health, particularly in a relationship, and that need is valid. Physical intimacy in general is a massive part of intimate relationships. It’s taken decades of progress for people to accept that sex is valid and enriching, not shameful. I’m worried that yes, behind our attitudes lies the still pervasive social attitudes that sex is dirty, wrong, and something for us to police if it doesn’t fit the bounds of what we consider acceptable. We haven’t eliminated harmful attitudes to sex, and the desire that others get to decide if vulerable populations like disabled people or the poor are allowed to have initmate lives. This is about how easily rules can be used to oppress or police others - as they have been in the past. What happens to sex workers? To our LGBTQ friends if someone decides that gay sex is riskier? It’s worth noting that intimacy is only illegal if you live apart - favouring those rich enough to have the space to move in together and the married. The poor, those living with others, those who aren’t ready to take that step, those who rely on sex to make a living - face an entirely different set of rules. It’s worth asking yourself why it’s OK to move in (and risk exposing each other) but not OK to visit the person you’d be allowed to expose all the time.  Why it’s OK for the government to draw a line on which relationships matter, and when - and what hoops you have to jump through. This isn’t new - out LGBTQ friends will tell us this was always a thing. But we need to be ever more vigilant as our personal lives are policed more and more. “Nobody is talking about this” is legitimate criticism when we’re talking about a horrifying event people may be unaware of, but lazy writing when we’re talking about something that both evidently affects many people and ... is being discussed. It allows you to fill an article with righteous indignation about how people aren’t doing something rather than just... doing it. As it is, I’ve read multiple articles about people missing grandchildren, wanting to see recently born babies, missing their friends, struggling with this whilst being single. I’ve read articles about the lonely and vulnerable. And actually, more articles about all those things when you add them up, than I’ve seen about romantic relationships. Which is great -  because this pandemic and the lockdown are having a massive effect on a lot of people in many ways, and it personally interests me that we record those experiences and share them. I’ve even seen so many articles about people missing going to the pub, or which restaurants they wish they could visit. And that’s OK, it can be the little things about normality that we miss. I miss museum dates, for example, and there wasn’t even any sex involved!  We all miss normality.  And I’ve had those conversations in real life, too. These conversations are important, but it’s possible to have them without downplaying something that doesn’t matter to you when it obviously matters to other people. I have been single for long periods of time; I’d be the first to suggest here’s more to life than romantic relationships. Hell, at times that was my absolute last priority.  I’ve lived away from friends and family  - I am not new to loving people at a distance, and it’s still been hard despite my having the experience to deal with it. If anything, this pandemic just shows how those links feel very different, when we’re not able to travel. Suddenly everyone feels much further away, and I re-evaluate just how happy I am to live far away.  For what it’s worth, I think we need more articles highlighting how difficult it is to manage all sorts of interpersonal relatioships at a distance as lockdowns ease.  And as someone who’s in a romantic relationship, the pain of bieng isolated in all these spheres just isn’t the same. I miss hugging my mum. And I miss my friends. And I miss my boyfriend. It all hurts. Looking at her own personal examples, the crux of the matter isn’t that she can’t see her family or friends - it’s that most of them live far away, and even if they live nearby, she’s not allowed to hug them. I’d love to hear more about people’s lives - what they are missing, what they hope to be able to do soon. And I can completely empathise with her: I wish I could see my sister, too: I’ve only seen her once since lockdown, briefly and under social distancing. I miss my friends - we live far apart but that used to be easier to bridge when we weren’t under lockdown. I have friends’ babies I’m yet to meet. New BFs yet to be introduced, etc. Weddings we’ve all missed. I can fully empathise with the author’s frustration at being unable to do these things - it has truly had a significant impact on my life this year that I’m mssing out on many of these things too. But that doesn’t in the slightest make it any less awful that I can’t be with my boyfriend, too.

[aion-rsa]

How Ginger Snaps Explored the Subversive Horror of Womanhood

https://ift.tt/30jSLcc

In 2000 Mission: Impossible 2 topped the box office, Gladiator triumphed at the Oscars, and the first X-Men movie ushered in a new era of superhero movies. Meanwhile in Canada, while no one was watching, a new hero was emerging. Her name was Ginger, she was a 16-year-old girl, and ok, she might have turned into a monster and killed a few people but, wow, was she a ferocious figurehead for females everywhere. 

“That’s what she’s about. She’s about fuck you, fuck the patriarchy, fuck the standard, fuck society, fuck the norm. And to me, that’s a hero,” says Katharine Isabelle, speaking with Den of Geek via Zoom from her home in Vancouver, 20 years after the film’s debut. Isabelle was just 17 when she stepped into Ginger’s very cool boots and she had no idea it would become a massive cult hit.

“When it first came out, no one fucking watched it. It did well with some critics at a few festivals, but no one cared. No one went to see it,” she recalls. “It wasn’t until it hit the VHS circuit in small town Canada that people were like, ‘Oh, Ginger!.’ Emily [Perkins, who plays Ginger’s sister Brigitte] and I thought we’d be the only people that liked it because we were weird and dark. We had no idea that through the generations it would continue to have an effect on people.”

Watching 20 years on and Ginger Snaps absolutely holds up. More than that, in fact, it looks positively progressive and even transgressive in a year where we were onto our third Scream, our second Urban Legend, and our first Final Destination. Glossy teen slashers were the thing, which didn’t often make for great parts. 

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“In the ’90s, as a 17-year-old girl it was ‘be hot, get murdered’,” says Isabelle. “There weren’t a lot of really interesting characters coming out of that, especially in my small Vancouver, Canada acting world. So to see this and be like, ‘Holy shit, this really speaks to me, I am this dark, insecure, troubled, deep, dark humored girl who feels outcast and misunderstood by everybody,’ I was just like, ‘Yes. 100%.’”

Written by Karen Walton who would go on to write for Queer as Folk and Orphan Black, and directed by John Fawcett (one of Orphan Black’s co-creators), Ginger Snaps was a fresh take on the werewolf subgenre and a brand new slant on teen horror. This was about girls for a start – sisters Ginger and Brigitte who are weird outsiders fascinated with death. Though there’s sex in the movie it’s really a love story between the two females while the only male character who we have any sympathy for is a drug dealer who has no sexual interest in either. There are dog maulings along the way, and as we head towards the climax with Ginger becoming more and more monstrous, there’s plenty of gore.

But the most scandalous splash of blood is Ginger’s own first period.

Period piece

“You never see that. The visual of bloody panties is so shocking,” says Isabelle. 

“It’s what, 2020 and we’re just seeing feminine hygiene products using red dye instead of this fucking blue shit? We’re always so mortified by this human experience that half of the people on the planet go through. And you know what? At the same time you should be, because being female is a fairly horrific fucking experience in itself. So guess what? Why don’t you fucking look at it once in a while? For it to be labeled as shocking is just so boring to me.”

It would be bold even in 2020. That color matching company Pantone only last month released a new shade of red inspired by periods as part of a campaign to end menstruation stigma shows it very much still exists. So to be this open in discussing it in 2000 in a horror movie – traditionally assumed to be the playground of young men – was a brave move.

“I remember a friend of mine, his older brother had taken his friends to see it and he was like, [Isabelle does impression of bro-tastic young man] ‘Oh yeah, we were all screaming and throwing shit at the fucking screen and then we walked out. All this fucking women shit.’ I was like, ‘Cool. Thanks, buddy. Awesome.’ Fuck you! They thought they were going to see hot girl tits and werewolf stuff and they weren’t prepared for an actual look into what the female experience is like. And they couldn’t handle it. Pussies.”

Suddenly it’s like I’m talking to wolf-Ginger, fierce, articulate, full of fire, the Ginger that punches the mean girl in the face for hurting her sister, the Ginger that isn’t going to stand for any of your shit any longer, the Ginger that could tear the flesh from your bones if she wanted to. 

The metaphor of werewolf transformation and puberty is a no brainer to Isabelle.

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“You’re going along your life perfectly fine, something happens to you, boom. In one day, you have all these strange urges, you have all these weird thoughts. Your body is completely abandoning you and morphing into something else that you are not comfortable with,” she says. “It’s a complete betrayal of everything you know and how you feel. And it creates this monster in you that you have to reckon with and deal with. It’s a brilliant allegory.”

Ginger Snaps is body horror. It’s a movie about a woman’s own body destroying her from the inside out. Before she knows what’s really going on Ginger is bleeding, weak, crippled with cramps. Weird hair starts sprouting – a shaving scene really hammers home the horror of teenagers taking razors to their legs.

But with this pain comes power. Ginger is suddenly confident, beautiful, strong, the boys at the school all desire her and she knows it. She will take who she wants and do what she wants – there’s some serious wish fulfillment going on at the same time as the trauma of her transformation.

Being Ginger

It’s not really surprising that Isabelle is so like this iconic character. She says she had an immediate affinity to Ginger – both sides of Ginger, the troubled outsider as well as the she-wolf.

“At that time, I wasn’t a good enough actor to have acted it. I just had to be myself,” she laughs, “They showed a pieced-together trailer halfway through to the cast and crew and I had a complete panic attack. It was my first panic attack, and I was like, ‘I’m fucking this up.’ This is the best character in the best movie and I clearly have no idea what I’m doing. I’m obviously the worst, this is terrible. I’m ruining this, I should just die. So all of the insecurity and the manicness…”

This just in: it’s shit being a teenage girl. Even more so when you’re 17, on location without your mother for the first time and working 18 hour days. 

“I nearly fucking died!” she says. “Towards the end, it’s like a seven hour prosthetic piece when I’m full blown werewolf. I was living off of Oreos, McCain Deep Delicious Chocolate Cake, cigarettes, and Coca Cola. It was not good. And honestly, I wasn’t a good actor. So everything in that was just me being manic and sleep deprived and upset and insecure.”

Whatever was driving it Isabelle is excellent, flitting from difficult outsider with an undercurrent of fury to a whirlwind of teenage angst, sex, hunger, and violence that feels absolutely authentic.

Becoming the wolf

The effects are practical rather than CGI, which helps Ginger Snaps not to look dated on a rewatch. Ginger transforms gradually from woman to full blown wolf over days – she’s not a traditional werewolf who only becomes a wolf during the night of a full moon, instead once she turns fully she’s not coming back. Her different looks in the movie are cool and iconic – unsurprisingly Ginger Snaps cosplay is a ‘thing’ – which pleases Isabelle. The prosthetics procedure was somewhat less pleasing, however.

“I didn’t understand what the process was,” she says. “You see it in your head like you do when you read a book or whatever, or how the movie is going to be. You don’t think of the six hours on top of your 18 hour shooting day that you’re going to be inhaling alcohol-based paint until you’re high out of your fucking mind.”

The transformation came with other obstacles too.

“The process of losing my senses was a first for me. By the time I’m in the very late stage werewolf with the hair, the contacts and the claws, I can’t see anything, I can’t hear anything, I can’t smell anything, I can’t talk. I have fangs. I had to ADR most of the movie when I have fangs in. Because I had a lisp, so I’d be like, ‘Ask Tham. He’th the exthpert.’” She says, mimicking a line from the movie. 

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“It’s just terrible. I couldn’t touch anything and there is blood all over me, and it’s drying and I was trapped in my own body nightmare. You don’t really realize that when you go into it. So now when I read scripts, ever since then, I’m very like, ‘What does that exactly mean for the physical torture I will be experiencing through the duration of this?’ Let’s take a step back and just really look at this more closely,” she laughs. 

Pain and gain

Isabelle is funny – like Ginger, she has a dark sense of humor and though we genuinely get the sense that the shoot was traumatic (“We were all fucking ill and we were shooting nights for about three weeks in a row, so you do not see daylight. You lose your mind. It wasn’t quite Apocalypse Now, but it felt like that to me when I was 17.”), she’s got great stories. Like the time she gave herself a concussion… 

“There’s a scene where I slam my head on a desk and I was like, ‘Ginger probably really slammed her head on the desk.’ So I really did it a bunch of times and then woke up the next day with a fucking full on concussion headache. They had a doctor come in because I was fucked. He gave me Tylenol T3s and I took them on an empty stomach. I’m vomiting on set and they’re holding the roll, and I’ve got a bucket I’m puking into. And then immediately I had to do the slow motion walk down the hall scene. I was so fucked they had to put tape on the floor. I couldn’t walk in a straight line. I’m so mad every time I see that. I’m like ‘Fuck, you only get so many slow motion walking down the hallway looking cool and hot in your whole career, and you really fucked this one.’” 

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By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

Of course, it doesn’t play that way on screen. It’s a key moment in the movie and even 20 years on, Ginger’s look still stands out. Costume designer Lea Carlson put together her outfits from thrift stores to create a kind of indie/goth cool with spot on accessories for an aesthetic that matched Ginger’s newly awakened give-no-fucks vibe.

“When that infection hits and she’s got that fucking attitude, it’s like, don’t we all wish we could just walk around with that attitude like a hero?” says Isabelle.

She says she can watch the movie now and enjoy it, though she couldn’t for a while.

”I haven’t seen it in 15 years because I tend to not revisit my most awkward moments on film as a teenager,” she laughs. But she now speaks fondly of this “wonderful sisterly love story.” 

Ginger and B

She and co-star Perkins had known each other “forever” before filming began, having even been born in the same hospital and gone to the same elementary school so they auditioned for Ginger Snaps together. Perkins as the younger Brigitte (even though Isabelle is actually four years younger than Perkins) is sympathetic, awkward, vulnerable, and eventually heroic and there’s an obvious chemistry between the two. Isabelle recalls how between one of the auditions and the first time director John Fawcett came out to meet them Emily had shaved her head.

”I was like, ‘What are you doing? You’ve fucked this for us!’, I didn’t even recognize her in the room. And then thank God, we got the part. And that’s why she’s wearing this wig, this very offensive wig throughout the film…”

Why did she shave her head during casting for this movie? We can’t not ask…

“I don’t know. I don’t know. She was having a moment. She’s a very smart, progressive woman, and she was feeling her oats,” Isabelle laughs.

Despite the traumas of the prosthetics and the shoot, Isabelle has clear affection for the movie and a character who rings incredibly true even 20 years later, largely because of her authentic performance  “It connects still to this day with people who weren’t even born when it came out. And that’s always shocking to me,” she says.

So what would today’s Katharine Isabelle tell her 17 year old self, 20 years ago?

“Oh, God. Fucking suck it up, you whiny bitch.” she says, all wolf-Ginger before swapping back to pre-transformation Ginger. “No, I would be like, ‘Yo, this is good, and you’re going to be okay. You’re gonna be good, and you’re not going to hate yourself as much as you think you do. And eventually, in 17 years, you’ll be able to watch this without having a total meltdown about how obviously terrible and insecure you are.”

She pauses.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“Isn’t that what everyone says to themselves 20 years ago? ‘You’ll be okay, don’t be so insecure, believe in yourself, you got this?’ I think that’s what everyone would say to their younger self. Also, ask for more money.”

The post How Ginger Snaps Explored the Subversive Horror of Womanhood appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2ENE6yo

[bellamygateoldblog]

rate best to worst parental figures of the 100

worst → best (I tend to ramble throughout this, sorry!)

19 — Nia : I mean I don’t think an explanation is needed here lol. She burned Echo’s parents alive, it’s implied she then renamed her Ash, before forcing her into the identity of another child and filling her life with assassination and espionage. Mother Of The Year?

18 — Aurora : so firstly we have Octavia- who’s existence shouldn’t be. It was so incredibly irresponsible and selfish to subject her child to this life. If the ark hadn’t been dying and Octavia never caught, would she had been expected to grow old and die under the floor? Would Bellamy have spent his life, even after Aurora was long dead, being nothing more than his sister’s keeper?

And Bellamy- to manipulate your six year old son into believing it’s his responsbility to protect and care for his sister, so engrained into his mind and sense of self that he still lives by this mantra well into his 20s, to treat Bellamy being Octavia’s whole world as normal, having him go through his life with this small girl attached to him, entirely dependent on him, placing such a heavy weight onto a child- it’s UGH. No words, just a grunt.

He gave up his education and his personal life and he became a father when he was six years old. She took his life away.

This early family dynamic is at the root of ALL of Octavia and Bellamy’s major character traits, struggles and flaws, it drives them still, it’s effects are still felt and reinforced. BOO.

17 — Raven’s unnamed mother : And here is where I go off on a rant criticising the writing more than the actual mother. Just like Octavia, Raven was raised by another child, except in this case her mother is emotionally absent and said child is the same age as her (or younger) and thus i expect their experience and maturity levels are matched through their lives. Could this have bourne some co-dependency? Perhaps, but it’s never talked about i think because Raven’s backstory is practically a Schrödinger’s cat scenario with all the retconning that goes on. Like here- we recieved some more information in season six that directly contradicts what was already established of their mother-daughter relationship: “she never used me.”

*deadpan narrator voice* She did, however, use her.

That’s if we choose to accept this one as canon and not that one, god this writing is atrocious. Raven’s mother was neglectful, so much so that the only way she ate is through a boy sharing his own rations with her. Raven believes “she only had [her] so she could trade [Raven’s] rations for moonshine.” SHE DID USE HER DAUGHTER.

Furthermore, in season one she defended her mother (context: when a remark was made about selling sex in exchange for supplies), she tells her not to “dare talk about [her] mother that way” and i get the impression she at least respected her, but in season six she straight up calls her “a drunk who sold herself for booze.” In fact in season six she goes from being deluded one second- “she never used me”- to being scarily desensitised by a harsh reality the next, the same way she was in early seasons, speaking casually of her mother’s alcoholism. WHAT IS THE TRUTH? None of what we know of Raven’s family and backstory can coexist and yet here we are, talking about Raven’s family and backstory as if the writers ever cared enough to make it actually coherent.

16 — Murphy’s unnamed mother : did love him once, very much so, but let her grief poison her and turn her against her son. Another alcoholic/addict mother to add to the collection. We don’t have a lot of details about her, but the knowledge that she blamed her vulnerable little boy who had no control over his own health for the death of her husband who made his own conscious choice is enough for me to place her down here. The source of Murphy’s lack of self worth, *implied* intrusive thoughts, and difficulty connecting with others, and just in general sometimes being a total jackass. Yeah, it’s all her fault.

15 —  Clarke : like mother, like daughter. She electrocuted her child,  but what I find to be remarkably horrific about this is the simple fact  the device is the same one used to torture her in the  beginning of the season, the same one used by the so-called ‘villains’. She felt and endured the pain herself, and then decided subjecting her own daughter to that same treatment was an acceptable and necessary choice-  before leaving that decision completely redundant later by switching allegiance  and having Madi lead the army afterall. Madi was dependent on Clarke, the silent agreement is trust and respect, and this one singular  action showed Clarke violating everything it means to be a guardian and  protector. Also, she never apologised to Madi for this, nor did their relationship experience strain as a result when both of those  things absolutely should’ve happened. That’s my main gripe with the  relationship, the other being that it’s bourne of the same strain of  co-dependancy as the Blakes.

Something about Madi wanting to go to  school and be a regular child and Clarke responding to that with an ultimatum doesn’t sit right with me. At this point nobody cares about the Commander. Nobody- literally every single grounder is asleep- and, as her mother, Clarke has the right and the power to have Madi take out that damn flame to preserve her safety and youth and she doesn’t. She continues to let Gaia train her 12 year old for a dead position. Clarke is just as much culpable for the Sheidheda fiasco as Spacekru are for putting the flame into Madi’s head in the first place. That thing should’ve been removed as soon as it was no longer necessary. Clarke’s young, she had a child practically sprung upon her, and i want to give her the benefit of the doubt- but I won’t.

14 — Abby : I had no idea where to put Abby on this list and I think i’m being too generous but she’s a tricky one because I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad mother, not compared to the others on this list anyway, but the harsher aspects of her personality along with the high-stakes environment leads to the natural break down of her relationship with her daughter. I got the impression they were once close; Clarke is seen reaching out for her mother for comfort and validation multiple times during the first couple of seasons and she’s devastated and betrayed at the knowledge of what was Abby’s culpability in Jake’s death. Over time this falls apart. Abby never harms her biological daughter, but does have a very weird rival-like relationship with her, imo this being because they’re so similar. I can see so much Abby in Clarke and vice-versa. And they clash because of it, and Abby just doesn’t have any authority over Clarke, and over time their relationship distances to a point it lacks emotional value and other characteristics that make mother-daughter dynamics unique and meaningful. They love each other, no doubt about that, Abby’s been prepared to throw others to the wolves for her daughter a few times, just as Clarke does later in life. But the relationship between Abby and her daughter is strained from the beginning of the series, which makes her position as Clarke’s mother complicated.

Upon meeting Abby, Raven instantly viewed her through an almost idolistic lens- “relax, it’s a compliment, Abby’s a badass”- making me believe she latched onto this idea of The Mother She Never Had, and Abby’s first thoughts when encountering Raven were literally that she reminded her of her own daughter- “reminds me of someone.” This dynamic is absolutely intended as mother-daughter. While a mother-figure to Raven, though, Abby has directly and intentionally caused her harm. She’s electrocuted her, she;s then tried to avoid acknowledging her wrongness for that action- Raven in this moment of torture is as betrayed as Madi was by Clarke- she’s also hit her and while in a systematically higher position than her no less. These instances automatically make me wince away from the relationship because in no way does it come across as comfortable and safe for Raven. On the other hand, they’ve had a bunch of heartfelt moments even though they’re disguised as harsh jabs taken at one another. They’ve expressed the hard truth when nobody else will in times of the other’s vulnerability.

There is a stark contrast though between how she treats Clarke and how she treats Raven and the lack of biological relation, i think, is a buffer for Abby. IMHO i think her care for Raven is conditional, but unconditional for Clarke.

I don’t know what i should be feeling about her motherly-ness.

13 — Kane : I didn’t pay much attention to Kane’s dynamics, honestly, because I just didn’t like him, but as far as I’m aware he tried to do well by Octavia, Bellamy and Clarke, somewhat self-righteously and blaming, but trying is trying and he is always framed as in the right and morally superior so I guess that’s gotta count for something. This was all ruined during season five, though, with him attempting to have every one of them killed among other things. He didn’t appear concerned or reluctant- or anything about any of them.

12 —  Hannah : I think it’s safe to assume Monty had a good relationship with both of his parents pre-show. Hannah came across as misguided and manipulative towards Monty often, though, which i think came from both a place of love and desire to protect, but also, at points of most controlling, from a place of desperation and fear having already lost her husband. Honestly all I remember is not liking her very much so i’m placing her here in the middle/neutral area with Indra and Jaha.

11 — Indra : I place her here because we don’t actually have a lot of information about her relationship with Gaia. And I view her relationship with Octavia as mentor-mentee and eventually friends. They’ve had some sweet heart-to-heart moments, but i’ve always struggled to see the maternal connection. Octavia might be the daughter Gaia never was to Indra (I think Gaia might’ve even said this in the actual show?) but such a fond and pronounced memory of Aurora still exists within Octavia and with her very narrow-minded vision I don’t see her prepared to replace her or at the very least share that position with other people in her life. Indra is a stoic character, but it’s almost as if her emotional expression is reserved for Octavia. This speaks something of the closeness of their bond, but also tells us the climate between her and Gaia is more distant and troubled. There’s love there though- she was, afterall, planning to die so Gaia could live. Is this the only intended motherly sacrifice we’ve seen on the show?

The Blodreina of it all, while on one hand strengthened one dynamic, shattered the other. Indra is someone Octavia respected, trusted and listened to. I have to believe she was in the position to guide and advice her through the entireity of the time jump, but instead we saw her stand by and let Octavia slip further and further into her own darkness before turning on her in the most critical moment. And she might’ve tried and nothing worked, but really? You want me to try to make sense of this myself? The writers were on a quest to villainise Octavia and the fall of this relationship was a product rather than an intention.

10 — Jaha : he created a treasure, i’ll give him that. Admittedly we don’t know an awful lot about Wells or about his relationship with his father, but we do know he risked his own life to take care of Clarke, similar to Bellamy and to Raven who both also came to Earth to protect someone they loved. Both of those examples had terrible parents, so Wells’ goodness doesn’t necessarily mean we can credit Jaha, and as far as i can remember Wells never actually defended his father against the angry delinquents. Does him choosing to follow Clarke over staying with his father in space mean he must really love Clarke, or could it ellude to a certain father-son relationship not being as comfortable as it could be? When Jaha’s handed another child later on, he stops Kane giving him extra food because of something along the lines of: ‘he needs to learn the world’ so I think his parenting style may be more of the tough love and respect type. Wells is practical and strives to maintain order and squash rebelliousness thus his butting heads with the rest of the delinquents, but he has people’s best interests at heart (letting Clarke hate him rather than Abby, for example) and those are very Jaha characteristics i can see he inherited/observed and imitated.

9 — Monty and Harper : we only have a handful of information on this. Jordan has fond memories of them, but so does Octavia and Bellamy about their mother and we all know the truth about that one. Jordan is a backwards Octavia. Monty and Harper were all he had growing up, he wasn’t forced into hiding, but I can’t imagine it was a fun existence for him to grow up in isolation- watching the faces of other children behind the glass and never being able to wake them up to play. BUT his childhood is different to Octavia’s in a few ways that make a big difference and land them further up the list: 1) he’s clearly educated, 2) he has two loving parents even if they are all he has, 3) he has knowledge about the Earth, it’s story and the people from it so has a much stronger and more complex understanding of morality, meaning he’s less judgemental, and he’s also better prepared to interact with others by the time this oppurtunity arises.

They get points for leaving him in Bellamy’s hands, but are automatically relegated a few places for making Clarke his god mother.

8 — Bellamy : yes Bellamy is on this list because yes he is Octavia’s father and nothing you say matters. So every child he’s ever ‘adopted’ has died, but he tries his best to think of these children when nobody else was ever doing that. Octavia’s damaged and her more toxic traits have a tendancy to become amplified in times of high emotion, especially in the vicinity of her brother, but he was just as much a victim in all of this as she was and Aurora is entirely to blame for the disaster that is the Blake sibling relationship (I mean neither of them even had a frame of reference of what siblings look like, how were they to know how to relate to one another?).

He tries. He’s more equipped to and committed than most on this show to helping vulnerable people, he’s proven time and time again he’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect and love his sister, he gets it wrong sometimes, his efforts can be misguided and recieved differently than he might’ve intended them to be. But the facts are: he understands what it means to be a parent, he knows what it’s like to lose their child, he knows what it’s like to pour himself into someone else and hope for the best of them.

7 — Luna : she founded a clan and those people were, in a sense, her children. She kept them safe for years, it was peaceful, life was simple and fulfilling. Clarke observed her interactions with the actual children that lived there and they loved her, she was good with them. Her people respected her.

6 — Monty’s father : yet another heroic father to add to this fucking collectio-

5 —  Ginger dad : in one of the most heartbreaking scenes on this show to date, he does the David Miller thing, or i guess David Miller does The Ginger Dad Thing, and sacrifices his own life to pump more air into his child’s lungs.

4 — Murphy’s unnamed father : in a place you’ll be executed for petty crime, risking it all and stealing something as valuable as medicine just to give your son a chance at more life is commendable. He loved his son (literally) to death. It’s his memory and his sacrifice, like with Raven and Clarke, that pushes him to survive.

3 — Jake :  I think the show has demonstrated quite nicely that Clarke is a daddy’s girl. Jake The Good Engineer, Jake The Good Father, Jake The Hero. He inspires Clarke so much she goes to prison for it. And, like Sinclair-Raven, Clarke’s consciousness dreams him up whenever she’s in an intensely stressful situation and/or feeling hopeless about life and void of direction in general. This was a comfortable and secure bond, and his death marked the beginnings of Clarke’s entire story.

2 — David : easily one of the best fathers on the show, i mean he gave up the oppurtunity of claiming a spot in the bunker just so he could give his son better odds of surviving, he gave up the possibility of being in the bunker with his son. Another fatherly sacrifice for the collection. He loves Miller unconditionally, even when Miller himself feels like a disappointment.

1 — Sinclair : this was an obvious retcon, but still good as long as I don’t think about it. A cute father-figure, the mentor that took a chance on her, the first (or second) person to pick her. Everything about this relationship is sweet and healthy, a nice diversion from the usually exhaustingly complex dynamics. Their relationship was so meaningful, in fact, that it was him who Raven’s dying mind manifested to encourage her to go on living. 10/10.

(and don’t think i don’t peep that bad/cruel mothers, good/heroic fathers pattern here. These writers WACK…)

[rohobi]

The Personal Stylist 01 | (M)

pairing— kim taehyung x reader, personal stylist AU  genre/warnings— smut, fluff, swearing, humor  words—3,501 → chapters ⤷ A/N: series co-written by @taenity

summary — ❝You and Taehyung dated briefly before his debut before breaking things off. When you get hired on the styling team for his group, Taehyung grows interested with the woman he used to know again, paid to clothe him. Alternatively, you are Taehyung's personal stylist and he wants to be everything but clothed with you.❞

► Listen | happy reading

“Stylist coming through, if you don’t move, you die and if you die, I get days off so please everyone if you’re in my way, you’re going to die and you bet your pancake booties that I will be happy about it!” you shout while pushing a clothing trolley filled with gucci past backstage staff. “I’m being serious, move! Important goods for BTS coming through!”

“Hey, watch where you’re going Y/N!” a makeup artist shouts, narrowly avoiding being run down by your trolley. “You nearly hit me.”

“I told you to move Jieun.” you shout back, just barely being heard over the sudden roar of screams coming from inside the arena. Turning back to the trolley carrying his clothes, you push it harder towards his dressing room. You were severely running behind schedule, but what person here wasn’t.

Bangtan were at a much larger stadium at this stop on their tour and it was amazing. Lots of air conditioning and lights SO YOU CAN SEE WHERE YOU’RE GOING down hallways but, obviously, it wasn’t big enough for you to hide from him and his blue contact coloured eyes and silver goddamn hair. You hate this comeback. DNA? More like DNA helicase because unzipping jeans is all you want to do to him lately.

“Y/N, are you running to Taehyung's dressing room by any chance?” another stylist asks holding up a paper bag filled with food. “Take this with you, my wife’s working on his makeup.”

“I’m taking some too,” you mutter, accepting the bag with open arms. “Wish I had a husband as thoughtful as you.”

He laughs. “One day Y/N.”

“I seriously doubt it in this job, I’m married to the paychecks I get every week.”

Ruffling your hair, he smiles. “Who said money can’t make people happy?”

“Rich people obviously.”

Pushing the trolley past him, you shake your head as you smell the beautiful scent of cinnamon donuts. “God these smell amazing!”

Let’s get something straight, you were only hired on the premise that you were engaged. Which is a crafty tactic set by your employers to protect the boys from unwanted romance. You never felt the obligation to tell them that your partner of 5 years had fallen out of love with you and in turn left you for someone younger and with a penis a month post-contract signage.

You didn’t tell them either that you had history with one of their members. It wasn’t appropriate and you didn’t think it would matter when you both dated in high school and broke up before he debuted. In fact, you hardly even remember those 4 months you spent together.

He wasn’t your first kiss.

He wasn't your first sex partner.

You hardly loved him.

You hardly cared when he broke up with you.

And you had spent more time apart than together which is what made breaking up easier than pulling apart two magnets.

He was a different person now and to be honest, so were you but that’s just the natural forces of life. Keeping your single status under control was another way of life you had to maintain too. Do you know how hard it is to pretend to be in a relationship when everything about you exudes loneliness? so hard.

And, it was only by chance that Taehyung had overheard your phone call with your mother when you had announced that you were single again. The same phone call that should’ve brought tears to your mother eyes but instead brought relief as she laughed and cursed into the shell of your ear. “I knew from the very minute he bought a christmas sweater that he wasn’t for you. Thank fucking christ we don’t have to see that ugly motherfucker again.”

Through the crack in the door where Taehyung stood, it was the smile that had taken over your face and the laugh that fell from your lips as you pressed the phone to your ear that piqued his interest. The sparkle in your eyes, the smile across your face, the care-free body language. You look so beautiful and the attraction he suddenly feels after so long of loveless nights makes his cheeks burn a blush.

You were single.

And Taehyung was overjoyed by that.

Then, days later when you had hugged him after a particularly poor performance because you just knew how torn he would feel, his heart began to flutter again. The way you hadn’t said a single word before wrapping your arms around his shoulders and pulling him to your chest as if you just knew what he was feeling without him having to show it. He felt like someone finally saw him for the first time and then it felt like he could finally breathe again. It was akin to an emotional heimlich that squeezed out all of his anxiety and fear, and as you held him close, running your fingers through his hair, Taehyung never wanted to leave your arms.

He felt safe with you.  

But that was a year ago when you worked for RM and before you became V's personal stylist.

And now everything was different.

No longer the innocent man he proclaimed to be, Kim Taehyung was enthralled by the feeling of danger when he was alone with you. He was a cocky son of a bitch, a tongue in cheek little shit, and the bane of your existence. He begged without saying a word for affection, for your touch, for your lips on places that would relieve him of the fire burning underneath his skin.

And it was driving you crazy because hell no were you about to jeopardise your dream job for a horny kpop idol albeit how much you relished in the bated breaths down your neck, his warm hands touching places his hands should not go, the raspy whispers into the shell of your ear and the dark stares he gave you when you fixed his makeup.

You weren’t stupid and neither was he.

It was just weird. You never knew him to flirt so much and to flirt so hard with the likes of a girl like you; a leaf amongst red roses. It was apart of what made being a stylist difficult. The deep look he’d give you as he’d slowly tear his shirt off in front of you, revealing soft abs, or when he’d reach down and unbuckle his belt. It was his tongue and the way he’d lick his lips before smirking at you.

He knew what he was doing to you.

But even then, he didn’t know how much it affected you, he just hoped it would.

“I’m coming in Taehyung, are you decent?” you shout, knocking loudly on his dresser door. Wiping away the sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand, you push open the door when you hear him grunt his answer.

“Where have you been?” he asks. Crossing his legs on the black leather couch in front of a coffee table filled with food, he nit picks his dumplings with a single chopstick as he watches you.

“I was picking up the clothes,” you say, pushing the trolley in and parking it by the wall. “There was traffic so the clothes for your set only just arrived.”

Your phone vibrates in your pocket, as you push the door closed. “You pushed it all the way on your own?” he asks.

Pulling out your phone, you ignore his question as you respond to the massacre of questions from your best friend in your inbox. You miss the frown flicker across his face as he watches you ignore him.

You were wearing double denim again with an old pair of white nikes and your hair was pushed up into a ponytail. He hated it when you wore your hair up, he could only imagine it in his fist behind you.

“Alright, Taehyung. Time to get your outfit on.” You lock and drop your phone, making your way over to the trolley rack holding up several coat hangers with different style of clothes. Ones that you’d specifically chosen the night before according to the data you compiled on latest trends vs. potential trends. All that was left to do was pick and help put them on him without messing up his hair or his makeup.

Running your fingers through the many materials, you look at the variety of coats, turtle neck sweaters, shirts and pants. It was way too hot for fur, but Taehyung often chose the strangest combination of clothing in a desire to be the centre of attention.

So in knowing that, the rack was filled with an array of clashing gucci colours, fabrics that ranged in price and designers who had sent their clothing specifically to the member who would most likely wear them, as opposed to Yoongi who was dead set on his leather jacket for his airport look.

“What did you want to wear tonight?” you ask, mindlessly lost in the thought of what he’d look best in with his new silver hair.

He laughs lowly on the couch. “Tonight or tonight tonight?”

You ignore his comment as you continue to look through the materials, picking out a good combination of clothing. Grabbing the hangers off the rack, you turn to show Taehyung. Not expecting him to be so close behind you, you slam straight into his chest

A pathetic yelp escapes your lips and he chuckles, wrapping his arms around your waist, holding you up and holding you close.

You quickly regain your balance and put your hand up to his chest, “What the hell. Taehyung, you scared me. Can you not do that?” You exclaim, pushing him away and retreating behind him as quickly as possible. He was doing it again. Putting himself in these positions so he could touch you again and you were weak, very weak. “I’ve picked out the clothes for you and um, you might want to grab the robe or something.”

He pouts behind you. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I know, just put the clothes on. Tell me when you’re done and I’ll come and help you.”

Knowing that Taehyung was stripping out of his clothes behind you, you busied yourself by adjusting the shirt onto the hanger then holding that over the pants. You looked at the layout, a simple blue button up with red ivory embroidered on the collar, and long black pants through the mirror. You nodded approvingly to yourself. You could see the pictures of him on stage in these plastered all over the fandom.

“Are you done?” you ask, shaking your head of improbable dreams. “Can I turn around now?”

He hums his response and you turn around, eager to complete the job so he can leave and you can deep breathe. But instead of the bathrobe protecting his skin from sight, Taehyung stands in nothing but his navy briefs in front of you.

His eyes are dark and his lips are smirking.

You roll your eyes, you aren’t a 17 year old girl. Skin isn’t something you’re afraid to see and if Taehyung things that, he’s poorly informed. “No robe? Fine. I can work with that.” you sigh. Walking around him, you let your eyes wander on each crevice, muscle and scar on his body. You know you shouldn’t, but it’s in the job description, you’re just doing your job.

“So,” he starts. “I’ve been working out. Jungkook’s been dragging me to the gym. Can you tell?” he asks, flicking his hair back.

You carefully rest the outfit on the chair and grab the shirt from the hanger and unbutton it before holding it open for him to slip his arms in through the sleeves. “Oh, no idea sorry. I don’t pay that much attention to your body anymore Taehyung. I’ve seen all that I want to with you.”

He laughs cockily, as though he thought your words to be a lie.  “We can do a little revision at my house tonight if you can’t remember…”

“No thanks.”

“Are you sure? I know you like all of this.”  he whispers, grabbing onto his junk in front of you.

“First of all, no,” you cringe. “Second of all, your head's too big and your ears are too small.” you deadpan. Adjusting his shirt over his shoulders while he buttons himself up.

“I’m just trying to be healthier. It’s important you know, self-love. How do you expect to love another if you can’t love yourself.” he whispers.

Grabbing his jacket and pants, you nod. “That’s true. Do you love yourself Taehyung?”

He nods. “Yes.”

You wait for him to completely button his shirt up before resting the coat over his shoulders.

“Not too hot?” you ask, watching him roll his shoulders back as you bend down to help him into his pants.

“I think I’ll be okay. The fans love it when I take my clothes off anyway,” he laughs loudly before looking down at you. “But I’ll keep them on because you put them on me.”

“Good, I don’t want you to ruin these clothes. Or, my boss will have my neck.”

“Do you like this?” he asks suddenly and for a deep mortifying second, you aren’t sure what he means. He steps into the material without you having to ask.

Pulling the material up his legs, you raise your brows. “Do I like what Taehyung?”

Pulling them over his toned thighs, he grabs the waistband, pulling them up until the top of the pants are wrapped around his waist. You pop the button through the hole first before attending to the zipper.

This pair of particular pants is from a Hungarian designer who stitched in clips on the zipper line, making it difficult for the pants to full down for dancers with intense choreo like the boys. The expensive catch was that it was difficult to put on and Taehyung and you had already established that fact many times and as much as you hate getting on your knees for him, it’s what you had to do.

“I mean, dressing me. Do you like it?”

You sit yourself on your knees, making yourself comfortable in front of him as you pull the small metal zip upwards through the two clips. The pads of your fingertips lightly graze his bulge as you do, causing you to freeze for a hot second as his pelvis slightly jerks towards your face.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sensitive so be careful unless you plan on-

-it’s just that the clip is difficult.” you interrupt, frowning at the stupid bloody design. You mumble a small apology to his acknowledgement while your face heats up naturally at the idea of letting your fingers accidentally graze him again out of spite for his stupid annoying ass.

“About dressing you ...I mean, it’s apart of the job description. What about you? Do you like being dressed?”

His eyes are impossibly black as they stare down into yours. “I’d prefer it the other way, but when it’s you …I’ll take what I can get.”

“Ah…” you mutter awkwardly, rubbing the back of your neck. “You’re oddly needy today, don’t you have a girlfriend or something? I thought I overheard Jimin talking about you liking some girl.”

It’s silent for a few more seconds before his voice cuts through the odd tension.

“I mean, I do like someone but I don’t have a love life or a sex life Y/N. I don’t really have the time to fit that in the schedule but sometimes when no-one's around and it's just you and me, I imagine you’re my girlfriend and you’re just here to look after me. Sometimes that’s all I need. Most times it’s all I want.”

“What?” Your heart thumps painfully in your chest. “Really? That’s kind of lame.”

He nods. “And then I have those days where I just wonder…”

“I’m afraid to ask but about what?”

He stares off into the distance as though his thoughts were intellectual, articulate and meaningful but then he says, “Sometimes I wonder what your pussy tastes likes.”

“W-what the fuck,” You choke on the frighteningly sudden words so unexpected your heart jumps against your chest wall. “What did you just say?”

He ignores your question, patting his groin. “You aren’t done with my pants yet Y/N?”

“Did you just say what I thought you just said?”

He taps his groin again, prompting the return of your gaze to his zipper. The tension in the room grows unbelievably thick as you return your fingers to his the zip clip.

“What did you say Taehyung? Did I mishear you or…?”

He clears his throat. “Y/N, I can be that guy you know.”

“What guy?” you ask.

He stares at you, eyes cast in sincerity. “The guy that kisses you, chokes you and throws you up against a wall. I can be that guy for you. I’ll treat you right. I’ll even eat you out for an hour. I’ll make sure you finish. I’m not like your ex. I won't be.”

“How did you…” heat floods your cheeks as you mentally slap your bestfriend. “Did you read over my shoulder in the car? That was private!”

You’re slightly mortified at the thought of him reading your texts especially when the content was explicit and made references about him but the thought doesn’t subdue the sudden ache between your thighs as you clench them closed.

“Your phones font is in size 16 you blind fool and sometimes when you type your messages, you say them out loud under your breath. I know you want me.”

“I can’t believe you were reading my messages and I can’t believe you just said that to me.” You slide your hands from the zip to right over his groin in anger, applying pressure to where you know he needs it the most. “I can’t do one thing without you getting into my business now can I?”

You frown hard when he whispers and then you almost immediately notice the outline of his hardening length under your palm. “What would you fucking know about satisfying me Taehyung, you’ve spent the last year murdering my soul and driving me crazy.”

You look up to see his eyes clenched shut and his bottom lip trapped in between his teeth, he was enjoying this a little too much. He steps closer to you, prompting the movement of your hands as he sways his hips. “Touch me Y/N,” he begs, “I know you want to and I want you to.”

You scoff. “You know you want me to?” you repeat, letting him move his hips against your hand.

“I heard you ...I heard you talking about wanting me to fuck you behind your clothing partition.”

You gasp loud, palming him harder in anger. “You were listening to my phone calls, are you kidding? Where's the privacy Taehyung.”

His voice his strained as you touch him. “In the same place where you have private conversations and not in the car or in my dressing room. Do you have any idea how much I masturbated over the idea of doing that to you?”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised that you listen to my phonecalls ...but then again ...who knows what kind of voyeuristic things you’re into,” You exhale, as if already fed up by this engagement.

“I’m into everything really if it’s with you.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind cumming in these expensive pants and having to explain what happened to them to my boss.” You weren’t being serious. You weren’t even prepared in the slightest of doing this but you were way too proud to stop. You're thankful thought when he grabs your wrist to stop you, there is no way you’d make him cum not on his clothes anyway.

He holds your wrists tight. “Please don’t stay stuff that sounds like a promise for later because I always keep my promises and really hope you do too.”

“What?”

“Let’s not do this here,” He stands you up with a simple pull of yours hand and the gaze he gives you sends shivers down your body when he lets your wrists go. “I want my way with you where I won't have to worry about these pants ...or yours or your job and mine.”

You stare at him, heart still thumping loudly and groin pulsating. He finishes dressing on his own as the door slams open. “Taehyung, you’re on in two.”

He looks into the mirror once again before looking back at you with the slightest hint of that dirty cocky smirk placed on his lips. Walking around you, he whispers into the shell of your ear. “I’ll see you when I finish.” Then he was gone, leaving you alone to the strangest feeling in the bottom of your stomach.

“Fuck.”

If only you knew that was the beginning of a long comeback season with Taehyung.

[lalka-laski]

SEVEN DEADLY SINS Sin 1: Lust 1. Who was the last person you checked out? Did they check you out too? That'd be Glenn. And he didn't check me out at the same exact time (I was watching him undress) but he sure has his moments. 2. Who was the last person you desired, but they didn’t feel the same? I haven't desired anyone besides Glenn in several years so I can't remember. Maybe the random guy I went on one coffee date with & never heard from again. That feels like ancient history now. 3. Ever cheated on a significant other? If so, have you learned from it? I was a stupid freshman in college. I was literally drunk on booze and metaphorically drunk on all the freedom and available men surrounding me. I learned how much a single, selfish action can hurt another person. I'll never do it again because I'll never be THAT GIRL again. 4. Do you watch porn? Sometimes

5. Do you masturbate? Rarely. If I feel an insatiable urge I'll ask Glenn to come take care of me.

6. Best physical features on your preferred sex? Hands, shoulders, chest 7. Who are some celebrities that you think are totally hot? Idris Elba & Shakira are my top two 8. Did you ever lust after a best friend’s significant other? How did it turn out? Honestly I don't think so. Not to sound like nOt LiKe oThEr gIrLs but I've always had a unique taste in men that differed from most of my friends & peers 9. When was the last time you had sex? It's been a week-ish 10. Ever pursued someone, even though they were taken? Yes, regrettably

Sin 2: Gluttony 1. When did you last eat at a restaurant? What restaurant was it? A local burger joint last night 2. When did you last have fast food? Where did you get it? I guess last night's meal counts as fast food 3. What was the biggest meal you had all day? Today I've had nothing so far although I am about to dip into some pita & hummus in a bit 4. Do you have too many clothes? How often do you go shopping? I have way more clothes than I regularly wear. And I keep adding more and more to my closet with my shopping problem. 5. What’s something you have a LOT of? Coffee mugs, journals, David Bowie memorabilia 6. Do you eat a lot? Probably more than my body actually *needs*, yeah 7. What was the last thing you splurged (spent a lot of money) on? Two tops at the mall that were way outside my budget range. I ended up returning one of 'em though 8. What do you spend most of your money on (besides bills and anything necessary like that)? Clothes, takeout, booze 9. Last time you ate candy? What was it? It's been a little while because I've had a killer canker sore that limits my options. But I'm sure the last candy I had was some kind of sour gummy. I have 3 bags in my pantry as we speak... 10. Last thing you ate too much of? Too many mozz sticks last night Sin 3: Greed 1. Do you share things? How often? Actually, yes. I think because I'm the middle child in a house full of girls, I've accepted that nothing can be solely *mine*. This means that I'm great at sharing but terrible at drawing boundaries or expressing autonomy. 2. Someone asks you for a piece of your cookie. You break it in half, but the pieces aren’t equal. Who gets the bigger piece? It depends what kinda cookie we're talking about... 3. When you see change on the ground, do you pick it up? If it's a dime, yes. Because it's a message from my Grams :) And if it's a penny heads up also yes, for the luck! 4. How often do you lend money to people? Whenever I'm asked. Which isn't often but still 5. Do you loooove money? I mean yeah. And I sure would "looooove" to have more of it. 6. If someone offers to pay for you, do you decline or readily accept? I usually accept but will put up a polite fight. 7. Which of your friends is the wealthiest? That's a gross question 8. Would you take a high-paying job that you didn���t really like just for the money and benefits? There are a lot of other factors I'd have to consider 9. Ever stole from anyone? What about stole from a store? What happened? As a kid I stole from a store unintentionally 10. Do you ever have enough money? I guess in the strictest sense of the word. But I have very little wiggle room. Sin 4: Sloth 1. Last thing you procrastinated on? Dishes, most likely 2. When you’re at a strip mall and the next store you want to go to is at the other side, do you drive over there instead of take a short walk? Usually just walk unless it's snowing or frigid cold 3. What’s a typical day off of school and/or work like for you? They vary wildly but for the sake of this question I'll detail a day where I have no social plans. I'll sleep late then do a little reading while I sip my tea or coffee. Then I usually clean/organize/do whatever chores need doing. Next I'll take a luxurious shower (you know, the kind where you use all the products you don't have time for on a normal day?) And after that, it's anyone's guess. Maybe a walk, maybe more reading or some cooking. 4. What’s one talent you have that you don’t really work on, even though you have the ability to be good at it? Well, writing. I need to do more of it. I'm also pretty good at arts & crafts but I've never stuck with one medium long enough to really excel. 5. How many hours of television do you watch a day? At most 1-2. And that's only on nights I have a specific show to watch. 6. What about the amount of time you spend on the internet a day? Oh that number couldn't even be quantified... 7. How many hours of sleep do you get a day? Do you sleep in late? On worknights it's usually about 6 maybe 7? And on off days that number varies

like crazy. 8. Do you drive to places that are less than three blocks away? Well I don't drive at all, so 9. When was the last time you exercised? Does my walk to work this morning count? 10. Ever copied and pasted your homework from a website on the internet? Nah Sin 5: Wrath 1. If you could kill one person and get away with it, would you do it? Absolutely not 2. Is there anyone you honestly and truly can say that you hate? I don't know about that... 3. Is there anyone you want revenge on, whether you want to get them back big-time or just play a little prank on them for hurting your feelings? Again, I don't know 4. Are you fighting with any friends right now? Why? Nah, we're a bit too old to be playing those games. 5. Last time you were really angry? What happened? It's hard to explain... well, it's not really that hard. I just don't want to. 6. When you’re angry, what do you do to calm yourself down? I'm more of a shutdown and suffer in silence type of person. I try to write my feelings out in a journal too whenever I can 7. “Hate is just the fear of loving someone.” true or false? That makes zero sense 8. What’s the best revenge you ever got on someone? 9. Was there any hard feelings after your last break-up? On whose end was it on? Moreso on my end because he is devoid of feelings! 10. Ever been cheated on? How did that make you feel? Yes and it's one of the ickiest, most destructive feelings ever Sin 6: Envy 1. Is there anyone you’re jealous of? Name a person and tell us why. Pretty much every single person I've ever met 2. List three physical features some other people have that you’re envious of (no need to get specific and name people; you can just say something like “brown eyes” or “having perfect eyebrows”). Thin arms/narrow shoulders (really just a more slender frame in general), thick hair, slimmer calves 3. List three personality features that other people have that you’re envious of. Drive/ambition, self-control, common sense 4. Are you a jealous significant other? Yeah 5. Could you date someone who was really jealous? Not in a possessive or controlling way. But Glenn and I both have our jealousies when it comes to each other and our relationship. We can get a little protective. 6. What celebrity’s looks do you envy the most? That could be any number of women. I'm gonna go with Yvonne Strahovski though 7. Do you think anyone is envious of you? In your opinion, what characteristics (physical and mental) do you possess that you think someone might be envious of? I feel weird answering this 8. What are a few things you wish you were good at? I wish I just had more drive overall to pursue and build on my existing skills. I'd also love the ability to sing and play an instrument 9. Did you ever date someone, break up, and then see them dating someone very attractive a few days later? Were you jealous of that person? That's crazy specific and no. 10. When looking at a love interest’s exes, do you often find yourself jealous of their good-looking exes? I'm jealous of even the NON good-looking ones. It's a whole problem. Sin 7: Pride 1. What’s something you brag about a lot (be honest–we all brag sometimes)? I find myself bragging about how good Glenn is to me. At least it FEELS like bragging... 2. What physical features do you take the most pride in? My collarbones 3. Are you satisfied with what you have? Yes 4. Be honest… when someone is telling you something, do you often change the subject so it’s about you and your accomplishments instead? Oh no, and that's such a repulsive quality in people! 5. Do you like talking about your achievements? No, it makes me quite uncomfortable 6. Do your parents tend to brag about how well you came out? They don't "brag" about any of us. They're just not the type. Though they are very proud of our accomplishments and sing our praises when appropriate. 7. Do you strive to be better than others? Do you think competing with others is healthy? I'm not competitive in the least 8. What do you do better than most people? Making others feel

comfortable 9. Do you believe in taking pride in things you can’t control (ex. being proud of your heritage, being proud of your skin color, being proud of your natural artistic ability)? Certainly 10. Who are you competing with right now (it could be anything–classmates for a grade, co-workers for a position, other girl for a guy, etc.)? ......

[trickstarbrave]

I see some of my old posts abt this getting likes still so I did feel the need for whatever reason to post an update or rather restatement to my views on the topic

I know this is a horribly tired topic that was discoursed to hell and then left behind and for good reason so as a warning: ace discourse below

First and foremost I’m not in the business of telling ppl wholesale they don’t belong in the community. The vast majority of ace ppl are also other various lgbt identies and trying to “remove” people from the community is not a thing I’d ever advocate for nor have I really ever as far as I can remember. If I have in bad faith I would like to extend an apology bc I have bad memories problems and think those actions are wrong and harmful. If the consensus is ace ppl are lgbt then I’m not here to say everyone else is wrong and I’m the authority on lgbt identities. We are a coalition group, a mashing of communities w sometimes shared histories and experiences. Even if I think ace and aro ppl don’t have as many of those in common I don’t get to decide if they are or not. They are now and I’m more focused on making that work

Still though since it’s inception the ace community has not been a very healthy one. As at best a newer addition to the lgbt community being brought to light and given a label and community, the community has been toxic. Much of the foundational moments for identity were from the AVEN forums and a lot of harmful misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, and ableist things were said on their and supported. This kind of behavior has continued well into the community even today.

This is not a moral judgment on asexuals or aromamtics. I’m aromantic. I was also subjected to these things. I always felt alienated from the community. Even when trying to engage behavior was half the time welcoming and understanding and half the time felt very hostile. I point this out because again: many asexuals and aromantics are other lgbt identies and this rhetoric is very harmful. It’s alienating. It makes you feel guiltier at times. Furthermore at times the community pressured ppl who did not have absolutely any desire for sex in any capacity to be okay with it, as though they were on the same level as people who liked and enjoyed sexual acts removed from sexual attraction to people. Sometimes it encouraged harassing people for saying having sex was a vital part of relationships for them and they felt incompatable with someone who was repulsed by sex and didn’t feel abstaining for a hypothetical ace partner would be healthy for either of them. Even more alarming was qpp’s, really originating from the aro community, spreading and simply being a tool for a while in many circles to coerce people into relationships who otherwise wouldn’t be okay with polyamory or were underaged. I’ve seen so much harm and been subjecting to it that I did have to (and still want to but avoid it for stress reasons) point this out. Even more alarming was during the discourse era seeing big name ace bloggers with large underaged followings bring on self admitted pedophiles to their blogs, and refusing to apologize when said pedophile admitted to sexually harassing minors. Lies were spread to demonize lesbians especially, and to a degree gay men as well, including that we steal funding we don’t need

As well (currently) the lgbt community hasn’t had the best resources to provide a good environment for ace and aro issues, and the ace community has not made it a priority in many spheres to curate those spaces either. As an aro sexual abuse victim there were many times I didn’t want to see public displays of affection or hear abt sexuality of any kind at times (despite not being ace) and I knew asking for those to cease in lgbt spaces would be harmful and come across as bigoted. Lgbt spaces are places to express your comfort in your identity and your relationships in the way cishet ppl can whenever they want to in society. Seeking out spaces without that just meant retreating and being alone. A curated space for aro and ace ppl would have removed tension I know many people have had and still do experience by providing refuge for sex and romance repulsed ace and aro ppl

I felt more boundaries would be beneficial, as while trans people are no doubt a part of the lgbt community (regardless of how many trabsphobes say we don’t belong), trans specific areas and communities still exist. Trans spaces where trans experiences are centered are a priority. The ace community regardless needs better spaces for ace people besides social media and Internet forums. It needs structure and accountability. It needs to unlearn harmful practices and bigotry that have run rampant for their own members’ sake, not for the sake of outside people to see validity in it.

And for a while, people who were otherwise cisgendered, heteroromantic and asexual would speak out in lgbt spaces about trans and gay issues because this is the “same community”. Cis gay men have no authority on lesbian, bi, or trans issues. Cis lesbians have no authority on gay men’s, bi, or trans issues. Cis heterosexual trans ppl shouldn’t talk abt lgbp issues w authority. Cishet ace and aro ppl shouldn’t talk those either. A lot of the hostility and early discourse was abt that, about those bloggers who very quickly left the discussions and website entirely in some cases, speaking about issues that shouldn’t concern them. About homophobia and how it should be treated or tolerated, using slurs they had no right using, and more. Even more alienating was ppl saying a character was ace rather than gay, and when pointed out they could be both it resulted in backlash as trying to take away ace representation, and then real human survivors of sexual abuse who were dead were framed as ace icons and ace representation while framing their discussions of their reactions to sexual abuse as “the ace experience”. Lies spread that ace conversion therapy was a thing and that doctors were going to hold you down and feed you medicine to make you want to have sex, terrifying many young bloggers on this website who genuinely believed and lived in fear of this happening until they were told it was misinformation and lies.

(Yes you can be sexually assaulted for being ace, yes victims of sexual abuse can as a result ID as ace or aro, that’s not what I’m arguing against in case somehow someone finds a way )

But from the other side I’ve seen and spoken out against people who just said bigoted things. Claiming there were too many gender and sexuality identities. I think the split attraction model is limited to ace and aro ppl to explain our identities more coherently and misapplying it to others only servers in the end to stigmatize various sexualities, but this went beyond that. For many people “grey” and “demi” modifiers are useful. I’m grey aro. My romantic feelings are complicated and inconsistent enough I think it’s not average. Sure to a degree “anyone” could be demi or aro and many ppl in the ace community have misattributed those modified identities to ppl who didn’t even fully explore how they felt, but they are not worthless. I can count to you how many times I’ve felt genuine romantic attraction, and I do not fully understand the intricacies of romantic attraction, nor the differences at time between platonic feelings in practice. I was mocked for my identity several times and saw people with identities like mine mocked. This was not a discussion of it these identities were harmful like claiming disassociating during sex was a normal sexual identity. At worst they are unnecessary.

I’ve been always more invested abt having a better community for ace and aro ppl bc that’s what I ultimately wanted. No, they didn’t have the messy intertwined history of other lgbt identities but also they didn’t have to be. Lgbt or not there wasn’t a space for ace and aro ppl I thought was really healthy. It was either they existed there in a group with other people with their issues being talked about or not at all. Ace pride colors were based on the at times toxic forum website AVEN. The aro community was often overlooked by ace ppl or at times actively thrown under the bus.

And lies and misinformation was still spread. Pieces of history incoherently being co-opted and misappropriated to seem legitimate. And to top it all off ace and aro specific oppression was incoherently discussed to. How different forms of oppression work together and often feed into each other or take new shapes was ignored. Studies were extremely limited in scope, loaded, and mostly inconclusive. Facets of misogyny and even homophobia were framed as ace exclusive and unique experiences, and people lied about real life discrimination for being ace (usually these were young people like the 15 y/o who claimed to have two gay dads who kicked her out for being ace, so I won’t dwell on those as much. Tumblr has been a weird website). Discussions of race especially were riddled w terrible behavior from white ace bloggers who resorted to lying, shaming, and guilt tripping. All this only serves to fan the flames and drive a wedge between communities even tho inclusionists claimed it was all evil exclusionists doing while refusing to call out the misinformation and bigotry they often spread. There was no purpose in harassing bloggers of color, no purpose in terrifying children so they lived in fear of medical professionals and most ppl, and no excuse.

Hopefully moving on from this it will truly die away, but I hope people learn from it. This wasn’t just as some ppl frame it cis gay and lesbian bloggers starting a harassment campaign to try and kick aces out on a large scale. This was a messy discussion that was years brewing until it exploded in even more vitriol, misinformation, and rage. It became an opportunity to critique an (albeit in comparison young) community for harmful behavior that was going unchecked and lead to even further bigotry, misinformation, and alienation. And the bigotry and misinformation didn’t serve a purpose and little understanding of what ace and aro people needed besides information and education to the public, which was already taking place before this, was had. And ultimately I expected more from the community at large.

To ace and aro followers and readers: I’ve seen some ugly parts of the community but I don’t necessarily demand you answer for that behavior, unless you’re personally guilt of it. I don’t say this because I have a mission to prove you’re bad. I think the community is toxic, but it will ultimately not get better unless ppl who are dedicated to it are willing to help find what resources ppl need, provide it, and refuse to encourage or call out shitty behavior. And ultimately that will come from a place of love and desire to create an environment future generations will feel welcomed in. I just don’t want other ace and aro kids being lied to about what they’ll experience, subjected to homophobia and transphobia of many colors, and at times groomed by adults. And I don’t want it based around just social media where anyone can lie abt credentials and act like an expert to further any of those horrible goals, even unintentionally

[bbreferencearchive]

Final Words

Documentary Film (for Reelz network)

Title: Charles Manson: The Final Words

Written by: James Buddy Day

Produced by Pyramid Productions, Calgary, Canada

 FINAL EDIT SCRIPT, September 9th 2017

EXT. CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON – DAY

 AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have a collect call from ‘Charles’ an inmate in California State Prison, Corcoran, CA, to accept say or dial 5 now. BEEP. 

CHARLES MANSON

Hello.

CHARLES MANSON

They’re still sending me naked pictures of Sharon Tate all stabbed up saying “There’s blood on your hands” and “you did this and you did that.” There’s a lot of ways of crucifying somebody without hanging them on a cross --

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have sixty seconds remaining.  

CHARLES MANSON

You being a producer it’s like, you kind of got get in the heads of everybody. Have you ever trusted anyone? 

PRODUCER  

Have you? 

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what I’m doing in here.

(laughs)

NARRATOR  

This began a year ago when Charles Manson, a man thought to be the embodiment of evil, started calling. 

CHARLES MANSON

If you can find a way to get me a cell phone where I can use it and call. (yeah). Let me get in the game and you can find a way where we can do what you want to do. But as soon as you get there you’re gonna have 15,000 people who are covering up what they’ve already been stealing and doing. 

NARRATOR  

What do you say to one of the most infamous mass murderers of all time when given the chance? We asked for his story in his own words.   

CHARLES MANSON

I don’t give a fuck about telling my story. My story has already been all over the world, 1,000 times, 1,000 times. You are for you, right. Right on, as long as we understand that, this is not based on friendship, not based on brotherhood, it’s based on guns and knives, it’s based on revolution and war, politics and governments. Survival. 

NARRATOR  

Though decades have passed since his conviction, the obsessive interest has never waned. Manson, of all people, appreciates his notoriety.

CHARLES MANSON

I’m the most famous human being not only that is alive, but the most famous human being that ever lived. And, I’m not even dead yet. – What do you think the fuck is going to happen when I die?

STEPHEN KAY

The problem is Manson is famous. The kids nowadays, they don’t look behind to see what it is he did.

 BLACK.

BOARD – THE CRIMES OF CHARLES MANSON  

NARRATOR  

In the late sixties, Charles Manson was convicted for the brutal murder of actress Sharon Tate and eight others. He was sentenced to death for all of them. When the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in nineteen seventy-two his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

CHARLES MANSON

The reality of it is, beyond the bullshit, is on death row. I’ve already done that been there. The people that haven’t done it and haven’t been there, they don’t understand it, you know, they have no respect for it. I got respect man.

NARRATOR  

Manson’s murder spree took place in the summer of nineteen sixty-nine. It was the peak of the Vietnam war, and a time of civil unrest. It’s said that Charles Manson was the leader of a cult called The Manson Family. They lived outside of society indulging in a constant stream of drugs and sex.  

CHARLES MANSON

We went where nobody had ever went before, not thinking about it, it just, it just happened man. I wasn’t nobody’s leader.

CHARLES MANSON (CONT’D)

All I was doing was fucking everybody I could. The sexual revolution everybody was doing I, was just getting my share that’s all.

NARRATOR  

The first murder took place in July of nineteen sixty-nine. Manson was convicted of ordering three of his disciples to kill an associate in a plot to extort money. After they stabbed the victim to death Manson’s followers wrote on the walls in his blood.

NARRATOR  

A month later the murders escalated.  The official account from the Los Angeles District Attorney is this; Charles Manson sent out more cult members to an isolated house in Beverly Hills with orders to kill everyone inside. It was the home of a beautiful and pregnant movie star named Sharon Tate who was spending the evening with friends.

PHIL KAUFMAN

 (Lived with Manson Family)

How could they drive up to that house, get out and know what their gonna do, nobody was going to leave that house alive. It boggles the mind. He says alright go out and do this and then you’re all in the car together going ok we’re going to do it, nobody says, man should we be doing this? Is Charlie right? They did what they did.

 NARRATOR  

At Charles Manson’s trial the prosecution stated:

 “On the evening of August, the eighth, nineteen sixty-nine, Charles Manson sent his robots out on a mission of murder. There is no evidence that he actually personally killed any of the victims in this case”. 

CHARLES MANSON

If you had to get up and hunt and kill your food every day, you’d be a hell of a warrior man.

NARRATOR

Before they left one of the killers wrote on a door, this time using Sharon Tate’s blood.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

They wanted to - shock - the public

NEWS FOOTAGE(OS)

In a scene described by investigators as reminiscent of a weird religious ritual, five persons including actress Sharon Tate were found dead. Among the other victims we’re Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring. One officer summed up the murders when he said “In all my years I have never seen anything like this before”.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

I was in the kitchen and the phone rang. He said they think Jay and Sharon have just been murdered. I remember just sinking down, I was standing next to the sink and I just sank down to the floor, like I’m melting, I’m melting just, I was stunned. I was shocked, I was in hysterics.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

  (Manson Family Attorney)

When the murders took place, people were buying Gatling guns. The whole town bought guns they we’re frightened to death for months.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

But for someone to hang up the phone on their boyfriend and the next morning hear that he’s been brutally murdered with three of his friends, it’s horrifying.

NARRATOR

Manson’s crime spree wasn’t finished. The day after the murder of Sharon Tate and others, Charles Manson took members of his group out again. This time they went to the home to an affluent couple named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Allegedly, Manson ordered three of his followers to butcher the couple, leaving more messages written in blood.  

CHARLES MANSON

They never lied about me. all the broads said is “I THINK he said go in there and kill those people”. Well she can think a pink elephant, that’s hear-say.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

It’s like a horror movie, like those movies where you wonder who’s going to be next.

CHARLES MANSON

People will put the bad mouth on somebody, for all kinds of psychological reasons. Jealousy is a big reason people maneuver.

NARRATOR

When Charles Manson and his family were arrested, and charged, it became the longest and most expensive trial in the history of Los Angeles.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

  (Manson Family Attorney)

The fright in the town was so gigantic and he looked like the devil sitting in court. That trial was like a circus. I mean it was insanity. 

NARRATOR

During in the trial, Manson carved an "X" in his forehead, which he later turned it into a swastika and shaved off all his hair. He says to symbolize his desire to be discarded from society. His followers all did the same.

CHARLES MANSON

They don’t realize that the X on their heads means the head is gone, man. You know, they still think that person’s there because they got a head, you dig? But I took the head. I got it on my belt.  

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

Every time I went to court, everyday they’d be out there singing ‘Charlie, Charlie’ with the swastikas on their head, shaving their hair. You know that’s not normal, you know looney tunes right there.

NARRATOR

For half a century, Charles Manson’s bizarre behavior has continued, and speculation over his unspeakable crimes has only intensified. But the question has always remained, how did Charles Manson get these people to kill for him?

BLACK.

BOARD – HELTER SKELTER  

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what that stupid -fuckin’ district attorney did, convicted me for the fuckin’ ‘Helter Skelter’ thing that he was thinking. And it took me 40 years to figure out what a cult was.

NARRATOR

When speaking to Charles Manson the topic of Helter Skelter comes up and frequently, and Manson’s answer is always the same. He maintains that Helter Skelter was invented by the prosecution. The Manson Family’s prosecutions were led by Vincent Bugliosi who wrote the book Helter Skelter which became the best-selling true crime book of all time. According to Bugliosi, Helter Skelter, was the name Charles Manson gave to his own bizarre philosophy which he derived from the name of a Beatles Song. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

One of their favorite things to do is they would sit around on acid and listen to the Beatles White album. They determined that what the Beatles were doing is they were sending messages to blacks to rise up and start a revolution.

NARRATOR

Manson allegedly convinced his followers that he foresaw the race war prophesized by the Beatles and told them they needed to slaughter white affluent victims to further inspire the black revolution.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

Helter Skelter, a social uprising between the blacks and the whites. The start of a race war. The apocalyptic end, if you will. Charlie and the family will hide underground. They will be the remaining ones left.

NARRATOR

The prosecution claimed that Charles Manson and his followers planned to hide in a secret cave located in Death Valley and wait out the war. When the dust settled, they would emerge and Charles Manson believed he would rebuild of the world.   

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

To say that it was an unusual motive is an understatement. But I can tell you that was the motive. 

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

Nothing could have been more horrendous than what happened that night to innocent people who didn’t even know their murderers.  And the reasons that this maniac orchestrated this whole thing was just looney tunes.  

CHARLES MANSON

I mean goddamn, this is not what I wanted to be. It doesn’t matter what I wanted.

NARRATOR

Manson insists that he’s been misjudged. He says Helter Skelter is a myth and that the true story behind the murders is one that remains untold.

CHARLES MANSON

And I’ve been deep in thought for almost 40 years, thinking what the hell does all this mean, how does that work? And the stuff that I’ve come up with, it’s just unbelievable, it’s fucking totally unbelievable.

NARRATOR

When speaking to Charles Manson, the most famous mind controlling mass murderer of all time, you have to be careful not to take him at his word. But after months of conversations, questions began to emerge.

CHARLES MANSON

The precious point is that the Helter Skelter that the DA made into what he was doing was wrong basically, when they lose control, they don’t admit that they lost control. They just lost face and they make another movie, like you’re doing. 

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

People who have looked into the case, beyond just a superficial level of reading of Helter Skelter, don’t believe any of that stuff. In fact, most of the media do believe he was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, and the whole thing. 

NARRATOR

We spoke with authors, researchers and people who know Manson directly. Charles Manson personally put us in contact with people who know him, others we found on our own. We sought to speak to anyone who was there when the crimes took place, all to unravel what actual happened.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

Back in 1969, we didn’t have access to the police reports, we didn’t have access to autopsy or the FBI files so we’re more inclined to believe the official narrative.

CHARLES MANSON

You’ll find out man. Have a good day, brother man.

BLACK.

BOARD – A CONVERSATION WITH BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

AUTOMATED RECORDING

This is Global Tel Link you have a pre-paid call from ‘Bobby’ an inmate at the California medical Facility, Vacaville California, this call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Hello.

BOARD – BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL, SERVING LIFE SENTENCE FOR FIRST “MANSON FAMILY” MURDER

NARRATOR

Bobby Beausoleil was the first person arrested and accused of being member of the Manson Family. He’s been in prison since nineteen sixty-nine.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It is extremely important that people understand what happened. We don’t want the same things to happen again we have to understand them and we can’t understand them in the context of Vincent Bugliosi’s little horror story. He did more to victimize Sharon Tate than Charlie Manson ever did.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It’s the same regurgitated Helter Skelter nonsense. That is so far away from the truth. I don’t care, I won’t say that, I will never, to get a parole, say that what Bugliosi said was true. Never…I’d rather die in prison than get out on a lie.

Part of it was the times and the desperation that had set in, in 1969. The events got out of hand. A lot of his attitudes and beliefs that he had been engendered while he was in prison became expressed. And again, I’m not defending him, he was a sociopath for sure. Not genetic, but something that had been developed - you know his compassion and empathy had been beaten out of him by the system that he grew up, in which was the juvenile justice and criminal justice system. 

NARRATOR

Manson’s told many people many stories about his childhood but certain aspects of his upbringing are irrefutable. His birth certificate from nineteen thirty-four identifies his mother as Kathleen Maddox. A fifteen-year-old single mother who struggled with alcoholism and was often arrested. 

CHARLES MANSON

My mother and my uncle did time. She was a throw away. 

NARRATOR

Sometime around nineteen forty-four, When Kathleen couldn’t care for her son or when she was arrested, Manson began what would become a lifetime in prison. Michael Channels has known Manson personally for twenty-five years and has quite possibly spent more time face-to-face with him than anyone else. 

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

If there is a “Charlie Manson”, Charlie Manson was probably created the first time he went into those boys homes. That kid went through some hell in there, and some of the things that he told me. He would never admit to being raped by men or anything like that. That’s just one thing he just don’t do, he don’t.

CHARLES MANSON

In Boys Town, you’re a juvenile. You go in when you’re ten years old and you play ping pong and if someone beats you, you gotta give the table up to them unless you want to fight ‘em. 

CHARLES MANSON

Everything is about fight. If you don’t fight they’ll fuck you in the ass.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

He’ll tell you about being taken down in the basement and put on the table and they make him get naked and then beat him with a strap. That’ll turn you into something that your starting to think ok…

CHARLES MANSON

They’ll take everything you got. And you’re raised up like that. So, you learn how to box and you learn how to fight. And then some guy gets a dagger or a knife or an ice pick and it’s a different kind of fight. You graduate and you grow up.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

That puts you in a whole different mindset. It’s about life or death where’s he’s at.

CHARLES MANSON

I’d only been outside a couple years when I caught this case here. You figure that if you get locked up in reform school when your nine years old and you don’t get out until your twenty, in your brain you’re still nine years old on the outside. Can you see that?

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

He don’t trust nobody. He doesn’t even trust me. As long as I’ve known him as a pen pal, visited him in jail, talked to him all the telephone for some twenty-five years now. He doesn’t trust me as far he can spit.

CHARLES MANSON

Anybody that helps me is helping themselves, and I don’t get much help because their ‘aint nobody there. You see it. So, it’s like, everybody that’s using me, they’re not helping me, they’re just riding on me. 

NARRATOR

Police records reflect that by the time Charles Manson was twenty-four years-old, he’d been arrested more than thirty times. Among his numerous offenses he’d been caught driving stolen cars across state lines, broken his probation, escaped from a federal prison, was convicted of check forgery, mail theft and even pimping.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

The first time I visited him and he walked out of the back, prison was just radiating off of him. He’s from prison. He’s not from your world and my normal world out here.

NARRATOR

Those like George Stimson who’ve spent time visiting Charles Manson in person insist that his view of the world is defined by his life in prison.

CHARLES MANSON

Prison is a mind. The mind is prison. That’s why they haven’t been able to break me because there’s no such thing. They’re in a fantasy. They don’t have a reality. Had I not done 22 years in prison before I got arrested this time, I would not have survived. The only reason I survived is, I’ve been through everything in prison ever since I was nine years old.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It’s hard to understand. I mean, unless you really kind of have an understating of how things operate in prison and how selfish people tend to think when they’re in that environment.

NARRATOR

Leading up to the summer of nineteen sixty-seven, Charles Manson was in Los Angeles serving time for check forgery in a federal prison called Terminal Island

BLACK.

BOARD – TERMINAL ISLAND PRISON

NARRATOR

Two years before the murder spree Phil Kaufman was arrested trying to smuggle Marijuana into the U.S. from Mexico. He ended up in prison alongside Charles Manson.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

I got arrested in Tucson, Arizona. I got to terminal Island. I had just gone through the A&O, admission and orientation, before I was allowed out in the yard. There’s this guy with a guitar. Being in prison you gotta be careful who you associate with, and Charlie was a good guy to hang out with because he did give a fuck and he played music.

NARRATOR

Phil Kaufman knew Manson on the inside before anyone ever associated the name “Charles Manson” with the devil incarnate. Kaufman recalls the man he called “Charlie” as a laid-back inmate fully comfortable in prison life, to the point that he was completely unwilling to reform.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

If you get five years in a federal penitentiary and they don’t give you any incentive, you’ll just do five years and your uncontrollable. But when you’re sentenced they give you good time so a five-year sentence may be only forty months… But Charlie didn’t do that, he did all the time. He didn’t program. You know he got five years, Charlie did five years.

NARRATOR

According to prison records Charles Manson has received countless reprimands. He once described a prison confrontation in the sixties when a common punishment was for the guards to have the inmates ‘give in’ by putting their “nose to the wall”.

CHARLES MANSON

We fought for 48 days and 48 nights trying to make me put my nose on the wall. I told him “I ain’t putting my goddamn nose on that wall, fuck you”. And they’d come in and rush me and throw me up against the wall, like it or not. Then I’d slide down the wall. Next day they’d come, say, “Get up against the wall”. I’d say “No way”. Here we go again. Yeah, they can beat me but that can’t eat me.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

He was playing his guitar and so a guard comes up to him and said “Manson, you ‘aint never gonna get outta here”, and Charlie just kept playing his guitar and said “outta where man”, and just kept going.

CHARLES MANSON

I was a federal prisoner, DEAD, I got out of Terminal Island. Can you understand that? You know it’s like, I had played that game and won every pocket.

NARRATOR

Manson’s release paperwork from Terminal Island is dated March twenty first, nineteen sixty-seven. Vietnam was at the forefront of the American consciousness and a large segment of the male population was either at school or war. Many of the women left behind were embracing what would become known as the summer of love.   

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

There was a lot of runaways at the time and a lot of people disenchanted with the status quo and they were easy marks, especially up in San Francisco.

The acid you know the pot and everything, they we’re looking for love and Charlie was selling it whole sale.

NARRATOR

This is when it’s been reported that Charles Manson formed a cult called The Manson Family. How did he transition from a chronic petty criminal to a psychotic villain capable of mind control? Until this point in his life, he’d never been charged with a violent crime and no one had ever described him as a guru or spiritual leader so something had to change in the summer of nineteen sixty-seven.

BLACK.

BOARD - THE MANSON FAMILY 

CHARLES MANSON

You see in they call it. In prison, they call it a run. When I get out of prison I run until I’m back in prison again.

NARRATOR

According to Manson, right after prison he spent the first year going back and forth between Haight Ashbury in San Francisco and Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. 

CHARLES MANSON

I went to ‘Frisco and I was talking to this supposedly great holy guy. You dig? And he’s telling me when you can sit and be comfortable and at peace with yourself that you’re just in harmony, you dig? Now check this out. I figured a lot of things out. I figured this out. I figured it would be easier not to understand anything and keep your mind open and never make your mind up about nothing.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson’s mix of sixties culture and prison jargon attracted young women. Communes were abundant in California in nineteen sixty-seven. This is when Manson met the first two members of what would become known as the “Manson Family”; Mary Brunner who later gave birth to his child, and Lynette Fromme better known as “Squeaky”.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Remember these weren’t ordinary people. And I get upset with the historians that refer to this group as hippies. They weren’t hippies. Hippies were flower children, they believed in “Make love, not war.” The Family referred to themselves as ‘Slippies.’ They said they were going to slip under the awareness of society. They were very violent. It was a religious cult.

NARRATOR

At trial the prosecution stated the family was nothing more than a closely-knit band of vagabond robots who were slavishly obedient to one man and one man only, their master, their leader, their god Charles Manson. One member of the group was Catherine Gillies. She adopted the nickname “Capistrano” or “Cappi” for short after fell in with Manson in the spring of nineteen sixty-eight.

CAPPI

I mean none of that shit was real, ok. We we’re trying to step out of society is what we we’re trying to do. We didn’t have stabbing practice on Saturday and hang Charlie from a cross on Sunday. I mean none of those things are real. We didn’t call ourselves ‘The Manson Family’, okay. That was, that was the press. We called ourselves a family but we meant that because we were brothers and sisters not because we were ‘The Family’ we were ‘A’ family.

NARRATOR

Another member named Sandra Good collaborated on a book with her partner George Stimson in which he talked about life inside the so-called Manson Family.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

A lot of people do that when you’re young and you’re living like a family, but you know, it doesn’t have the connotation that Manson Family does, capital M, capital F.

NARRATOR

This contention appears to be supported by the trial transcripts. In many instances Vincent Bugliosi says clearly that the group called themselves “the family” but no one ever refers to them as “The Manson Family” the label often reported, which according to George Stimson is significant.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

The thought that he was actively recruiting people to set up some kind of organization to carry out his homicidal aims is just ridiculous.

NARRATOR

But the reality is that they did commit homicidal acts, however, according to several individuals who were part of the group, the label THE MANSON FAMILY was only used by the press and not consistent with how they interacted or viewed themselves at that time.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

You know most of them we’re inexperienced with communes prior to joining that one. So, their only experience with communes would have been with Charlie.

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have sixty seconds remaining.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

They were always free to leave.

CHARLES MANSON

You know it’s weird man, it’s like you see a bunch of people and their coming along in your life and they’re doing what you’ve already done. I noticed this about people when they think I’m a hippie cult leader.

NARRATOR

The group was made up primarily of young women. Contrary to the common picture of Manson being a master manipulator who recruited them and controlled their minds, Bobby Beausoleil related that they came together much differently.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

What most people don’t understand is that it wasn’t Charlie’s charisma that attracted more women. It was once he had the two women together, the women attracted the women. Women who like a community of women, and that was the attraction in that group.

NARRATOR

How they came together and viewed themselves genuinely matters because it’s the first part of understanding whether Manson and the others were a hippy commune or a religious cult. The Helter Skelter theory is dependent on Charles Manson being a brainwashing cult leader, but people who were part of the group deny that dynamic. Is there another explanation for their heinous acts other than Manson dictating that they murder on his behalf?

CHARLES MANSON

I never ordered nobody to do anything but other than what the fuck they wanted to do. Do what you want, if you’re with me you’re free like me. I do what I want to do. You do what you want to do. Be careful with this phone call and don’t use it cause any more persecution to my friends, my family. Peace, I gotta go. My phone time’s up.  

BLACK.

BOARD - THE MANSON GIRLS

NARRATOR

The media has characterized the women who participated in the murders as middle-class and virtuous. They’ve been described as girl scouts, or good students, or Sunday school teachers, that Manson transformed into serial killers. Why would young women with good backgrounds leave their homes to live with an ex-convict who just wanted sex and death?  

Leslie Van Houten was nineteen when she met Charles Manson. The following summer she joined two others in the slaughter of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

RICH PFEIFFER

  (Leslie Van Houten’s Lawyer)

The problem people have is how can you go from a homecoming queen to being a Manson follower? Her childhood was really good until her parents got divorced. Back then it was very different than it is now. It was a big social stigma. She ended up with the druggie kids and the less desirables and she ended up doing drugs at that time. She got pregnant. Her parents pretty much pressured her into having an illegal abortion in the home, and they buried the fetus in the back yard, and that’s something she couldn’t get away from. After that the drug use escalated.

PETER CHIARAMONTE

   (Leslie Van Houten’s former  

  Boyfriend).

She was looking for a spiritual leader and she had home already left home and went out on the road. Bobby takes her to meet Charlie. I think it might have bothered him – that she would challenge him, she and Pat were really the only two that would.

NARRATOR

Patricia Krenwinkel, nicknamed Katie, was with Leslie Van Houten the night they killed the LaBiancas. Krenwinkel also participated in the Sharon Tate murders. At parole hearings, she’s described that her sister was a drug addict who died from an overdose at the age of twenty-nine. Before her death she introduced Patricia to drinking, drugs and alcohol. When Krenwinkel met Manson, she was nineteen. She’d left home to live with her heroin addicted sister in Venice, California.

One of the most infamous murders was Susan Atkins who took the nickname Sadie. She brutally murdered Sharon Tate and used her blood to write PIG on a door. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Susan Atkins had a terrible childhood she was abandoned by her parents, she was molested. 

NARRATOR

When Susan Atkins was fifteen her mother died from cancer, sending her home life into a spiral. When Atkins met Charles Manson she’d already worked as a topless dancer, been arrested for car theft, stolen property, and was a heavy drug user.

SUSAN ATKINS

I used to think you came down off an acid trip after 12 hours. Every time you drop acid you get a little bit further away from reality.

CHARLES MANSON

Susan’s pretty, she’s me actually. You see me is all there is, there’s nobody but you.

SUSAN ATKINS

I took so much acid that I was what I would term spaced, and it took me many years to, what I would term now, re-enter, and that was just through not having any acid and having to deal with reality every day.  

NARRATOR

If these were not perfect young women, plucked from society and corrupted solely by Charles Manson, did he actually brainwash them or were they working alongside him in a common motive? What was life like inside the so-called family the year leading up to the murders?

BLACK.

BOARD - THE SUMMER OF ’68  

NARRATOR

When you ask Charles Manson about life in the group before the murders, he talks about sex.

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody walked around naked. We’d all get together and just have a big bang man.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with “Manson Family”)

I lived with them for almost a month. He’d say you know everybody has to make love. Love. It’s love, spread the love, you know. It was like sex on demand.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

When you’re inside you have nothing, and all of a sudden he’s out and, you know, he said it was a prisoner’s dream come true.

NARRATOR

Another member of the group was Barbara Hoyt who like many of the others was seventeen when she ran away from home after an argument with her father. 

BARBRA HOYT

I met Squeaky. Sandy was pregnant. Sadie, we talked about the hypocrisies of life.

CHARLES MANSON

Nobody’s been able to get women together with each other. They’re jealous creatures, it’s hard to get two women together. And here comes along a nobody from prison who ‘aint even been out of prison long enough to spell his name right. He’s got thirty-five women up and doing whatever, you dig? 

NARRATOR

If Manson had found the dream life of an ex-convict, why would he indoctrinate them to murder people?

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

These murders did not happen because there was not going to be an apocalyptic race war, that’s not why this happened, the victims weren’t chosen at random.

NARRATOR

Brian Davis has spent more than a decade speaking to anyone involved in the events surrounding the murders on his online radio show. From his viewpoint, the key to understanding what happened is Charles “TEX” Watson because he was the person that actually led the murder parties on both nights, and killed more than anyone else.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex was perfect. A solider, a solider who’s in service is righteous and real. There’s no in between.  

NARRATOR

At trial the Vincent Bugliosi said Manson had “total and complete domination over his family including the actual killer Tex Watson”. How did Tex Watson come to be with Manson and perhaps fall under his control?  Brian Davis recounts that in nineteen sixty-seven, Watson left Northern Texas to live with a friend in Los Angeles, finding a part-time job at a Hollywood wig shop. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

I talked with the guy that worked with Tex. He said Tex was an all-American boy. After about a year, Tex started to hang out at parties and smoke marijuana, grew his hair out a little bit and at that point he said Tex started to turn. So, all this was going on leading up before Tex ever met Charlie.

NARRATOR

Tex Watson met Charles Manson when he was invited to a never-ending party that was being held at a Pacific Palisades mansion. The house was owned by the drummer of the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson.

 BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Charlie crosses over into that because of the girls, Pat and Ella Joe Bailey we’re out hitchhiking and Dennis Wilson picked them up.

NARRATOR

The Beach Boys fifteenth studio album Twenty-Twenty, features a song co-written by Charles Manson called “Never Learn Not to Love”. During that time Manson befriended a record producer through Dennis Wilson named Terry Melcher.

Leslie Van Houten interviewed by LAPD, November 26th, 1969

LAPD: Tell me about Terry Melcher. Remember him?

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: Terry Marshmallow?

LAPD: Mel- Melcher. Terry Melcher.

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I call him Terry Marshmallow.

LAPD: Oh, is that what you call him.

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I don’t know really. I knew that he said he could get us recorded and that he had known one of the Beach Boys.

NARRATOR

When he met Charles Manson, Terry Melcher lived on Cielo Drive in the same house that was later rented to film director Roman Polanski and his movie star wife Sharon Tate, after Melcher moved out. This is a direct connection between Manson and the Sharon Tate murders. Prosecutors claimed that Manson was an ambitious musician who aspired to be like The Beatles and The Beach Boys, so Dennis Wilson introduced him to Terry Melcher, but Melcher rejected him.  When Manson decided to begin a race war by killing random white people, he chose Terry Melchers house. According to the prosecution the residence was symbolic to Charles Manson and particularly the establishment’s rejection of him. Phil Kaufman worked in the music industry and recorded Charles Manson shortly before the murders took place. This is an audio recording from nineteen seventy made as part of the investigation.

Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.

Up to this point he had recorded at various studios, and being as transient as he was, he never stayed around long enough, you know, to consummate a record deal. So, every time he recorded no one could ever release his music because he never signed any contracts. 

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with “Manson Family”)

‘Cause he had a good thing going for him, you know. Money wasn’t even involved in anything. He didn’t have to earn a living, he had girls going out and getting him food, he was having sex, playing his music you know. Life was good for him.

CHARLES MANSON

I could have been a rock and roll star. I could have been a movie star. That’s a slowdown. I don’t want a fuckin’ job. I’d rather have a vine of wine on the beach and be free as a dog looking for a place to sleep under the bridge rather than go to work. I was trying to get away from civilization.

NARRATOR

If Manson wasn’t rejected by the music industry, and Melcher’s house didn’t represent the establishment to him, then what was the real reason for Tex Watson taking three women over to Terry Melcher’s house and killing five people?

We put this question to Charles Manson directly.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex wasn’t wrong, you understand what I’m saying? Tex had to do what he had to do, and he said that. He didn’t say I told him to do a damn thing. They said the girls said it but the girls didn’t say it. She said, “Charlie told me to go do what Tex said.” You know why the District Attorney put the race war on me?

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have thirty seconds remaining.

CHARLES MANSON

You got the whole damn fuckin planet against me.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson’s answers are not always straightforward, and he denies involvement in the Sharon Tate murders, but the missing factor may be the song Charles Manson contributed to the Beach Boys.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie was told that he would be compensated for the use of the song, and the amount he was told was $5000. Now he didn’t care so much about the money. If you’re in prison and you owe somebody and you give your word and you don’t keep your word, that’s a justification for, you know, being killed. So, he sent Tex to kill Terry. Not a house full of five people. See that’s what’s so critical here. He wasn’t picking a house full of innocent people, he was picking Terry Melcher. The people that were there are the ones that took the brunt of what Tex Watson brought there that night.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson seeking retaliation on Terry Melcher for breaking his word, contradicts the motive laid out by the prosecution because it changes Manson’s intent from starting a race war to vengeance. According to the Helter Skelter Theory, Charles Manson planned to inspire a race war by killing affluent whites, so he sent his follower to Terry Melcher’s house. During the war, Manson would hide with his followers in a secret cave located in Death Valley. Afterwards, they would emerge and Manson would lead the victorious black army.   

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

When members joined the Family, he was telling them how Adolph Hitler was his hero for what Hitler did to Jews in World War II. He was a follower of Nietzsche. You know, just sick stuff.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Acquaintance)

They say Manson wants to have a race war. He wants the black people – they’re going to rise up and kill all the white people. For a supposed person that hates black people why would he now want to be in charge. The story kind of loses me all over the place.

NARRATOR

Some have proposed that the prosecution made-up the Helter Skelter theory in order to more easily convict Charles Manson through a sensational conspiracy narrative. Another theory exists which some believe can explain the murders without the race war motive.      

Brian Davis

I’m not supporting Charlie Manson at all. I’m supporting more of the truth.

NARRATOR

If the prosecution did construct the Helter Skelter Theory, is convicting a man like Charles Manson so essential that any means of achieving it is acceptable?   

Brian Davis

It’s not about proving Charlie innocent. Even if it’s Charlie Manson. The law has to work for everybody.

CHARLES MANSON

This thing is so vast. I don’t know whether you can accept it. 

BLACK.

BOARD – AN ALTERNATE THEORY   

NARRATOR

Another theory proposes that the murders were the culmination of events centered around Charles Manson. Charles Manson had been released from prison and had formed a commune of lost souls. Several months before the murders the group had moved to a farmstead built as a backdrop for western movies and television shows, called Spahn Ranch.

CHARLES MANSON

I never realized it but the reason the ranch was so cool was that nobody ever lied to each other, man. We all got a long with each other, man. Everybody was straight up, there was no bullshit. We had a pretty nice group of people there. 

GRAY WOLF

  (MANSON SUPPORTER)

When I went to the ranch, I felt it was just the most mellow place I’d ever been. There was no ambitions. It’s a lot different than what the media might portray. 

NARRATOR

The ranch was owned by an eighty-year-old blind man named George Spahn, who lived in the main house which was located here. The ranch burned down in nineteen seventy-one but at the time extended along the Santa Susana Pass, isolated by the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley.  

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody at the ranch was one. There was only one moving thing on that ranch, that was George Spahn, the old blind man. George was the boss. You know it’s like the horses ruled the ranch. We all served whatever was capable of service. A slave understands it’s master much more than the master understands the slave. 

BARBRA HOYT

Charlie told Squeaky to take care of George so they could stay at the ranch, and she did. 

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

She didn’t like having sex with other men. That’s why she got into that for Charlie. She took care of George and that became her thing. She wanted to only have sex with Charlie, and so she put herself in that position where she wouldn’t have to have sex with anyone else. She was a caretaker. 

BARBRA HOYT

She loved him. I think he wanted George to will the ranch to Squeaky. 

NARRATOR

Records reflect that while living at Spahn Ranch Tex Watson was arrested on a drug charge in April of nineteen sixty-nine, three months before the murders. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It was business for Tex, you know, he partook and he sold. That’s how he made a lot of his money. You go back before the murders, Tex has got the history for dealing drugs, and making drug deals, you know. That’s what Tex does.

CHARLES MANSON

I said don’t lie on this ranch. Other than that you can do anything you want here. Just don’t hurt nobody. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

This is the connection. This is where it all connects.  

Tex Watson had a dope dealer. Tex Watson describes the drug dealer in his book as a mafia connected guy who owned a vending machine company that he used as a front for his dope business. 

CHARLES MANSON

Episodes like that happen every day in the drug world. 

NARRATOR

On July first, Tex Watson spoke with his vending machine dope dealer who was looking to sell twenty-five kilos of marijuana for two thousand five hundred dollars. Watson didn’t have that kind of money so he called his girlfriend in the city. She introduced him to another drug dealer named Bernard Crowe who was thought to be associated with The Black Panthers political movement. It was then that Watson came up with a scam. He would buy twenty-five kilos from his vending machine dealer for two thousand five hundred dollars, then sell twenty-two kilos to Crowe at a mark-up for two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. That way Watson could buy the drugs from the vending machine dealer, and deliver what he promised to Bernard Crowe, all the while keeping the difference in money and drugs for himself and his girlfriend. To make that work neither of the drug dealers could meet, so Tex Watson planned to have Bernard Crowe pay upfront.

CHARLES MANSON

As the convicts say, if you do all the talking you got to be all the right. Lying’s what gets everything fucked up.

NARRATOR

When the time came, Crowe wouldn’t hand over his money to a hippie he didn’t know, so he kept Tex Watson’s girlfriend as collateral while Watson went to pick up the drugs. When this complication arose, Watson burned them both.  

CHARLES MANSON

He just promised to deal some drugs for them, and took the money and ran. 

CAPPI

What happened was Tex made a deal with him evidently, and then fuckin’ bummed out on the deal. We didn’t get anything out of it, it had nothing to do with us. It was all about Tex, trust me.

NARRATOR  

After that an enraged Bernard Crowe set out to find the man he knew as Charlie Watson. 

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

When Crowe called the ranch, and asked for Charlie, meaning Charles Watson, TJ got Charlie Manson on the phone because he knew Watson as TEX. And when Crowe said I want my money and I’m coming up to the ranch to burn the place down and rape all the girls there Charlie said no you’re not. I’ll come down and talk to you about it.

 CHARLES MANSON

To deal drugs you gotta be real. That’s underworld. Underworld means anybody can take that away from you and there’s nothing the laws going to do about it. Before the cops catch drug dealers, drug dealers catch drug dealers.

CAPPI

He was worried about us getting killed. We had babies there and all kinds of stuff, and all these young people, okay and they we’re trying to kill us. And that’s why Charlie went to Bernard, to stop him before he killed somebody.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Bernard Crowe had Tex Watson’s girlfriend tied up, and I guess words were exchanged. And Charlie pulled out then gun a shot him.

CHARLES MANSON

Yeah, yeah I shot the Crowe. She said that Bernard was going to kill her. So we went down to help her, and ended up shooting him to help her. 

CAPPI

Bernard Crowe didn’t give him a chance. He had to shoot him or he was going to get shot, and Bernard Crowe just said “You better shoot me now, do it,” you know, and Charlie shot him.

NARRATOR

Bernard Crowe survived this shooting, although as Manson has often detailed, he was unaware of this.

CHARLES MANSON

That’s the difference between the underworld and being righteous with the underworld. In other words you don’t get caught off base or you get tagged out. It’s a simple game.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

He saw all the people he was with as children. They were weak they wouldn’t know how to hold their mud. Rather than try to convince them that they should, he just manipulated them to try to make them so complicit in violent crimes that they would not snitch on him. 

NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, Charles Manson’s shooting of Bernard Crowe left him with two problems. First, he had to be sure no one in the commune would talk to the police. Accordingly, he encouraged them to commit violent crimes for the group just like he had done.

CHARLES MANSON

I play cards. My family’s cards. My family are righteous; They can’t get away. They’re dead. Everyone in my family is dead like me. 

NARRATOR

Manson’s second problem was that he believed the Black Panthers would retaliate for the shooting, something he told members of the group.

 BARBRA HOYT

He was very worried about the black panthers attacking the ranch. It went from happy go lucky fun. It got so intense, so fearful. It makes me nervous just to talk about it.

CHARLES MANSON

We were in trouble with everybody that was against us. Anybody that didn’t like us, we didn’t like them. We we’re fighting all the time man.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie, when he had that situation with Crowe and I went out there to hang out, I didn’t know what I had happened. And he told me, he pulled me aside and he said, “Man, you know I don’t have enough guys here, you know. I’m expecting a retaliation from the Black Panthers and I need more guys here”. So, you know, I was a young kid and that sort of appealed to my ego. 

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody likes everybody else dead. Nobody likes anybody.

BARBRA HOYT

I heard Charlie was recruiting the Straight Satan’s to be guards. 

NARRATOR

To protect the commune and himself from the Black Panthers, Manson enlisted a motorcycle club called the Straight Satans. In this audio recording with the L-A-P-D, the Straight Satans former president, Al Springer, described their arrangement.

AL SPRINGER interview with LAPD 11/69

Charlie says, “Now wait a minute”, he says uh, “maybe I can give you a better thing then you got over there.” I goes “What’s that?” He says, “Move up here. You can have all the girls you want, and all the girls”, he says, “are all yours.” 

NARRATOR

Three days after the Bernard Crowe shooting, Linda Kasabian arrived at Spahn Ranch for the first time. 

BARBRA HOYT

Linda was, she was a nice girl who was looking for, I don’t know if she was looking for Jesus or, um, she was just looking for life, and what was real and what wasn’t. 

CHARLES MANSON

You don’t find too many women who will stand up in any kind of fight. 

NARRATOR

Linda Kasabian’s account is critical because she was one of the four directly involved in the Sharon Tate murders. When she was later arrested, Kasabian gave her first statement to her lawyer Gary Fleischman. 

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I heard her version of it the first night they brought her back.

None of it made any sense that’s the problem. It was nonsensical and that’s where Vince came up with the Helter Skelter theory. But I never heard that theory during the period I was representing her, she didn’t know anything about it. 

NARRATOR

Days after the Bernard Crowe shooting Bobby Beausoleil committed the first murder. The prosecution said that Manson “needed money” but the specifics of this motive were never fully explained. The motive was described as generally related Manson’s preparation for the race war.

 STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Manson wanted money. He wanted money because he was preparing for the revolution.

NARRATOR

The prosecution contended that Manson sent Bobby Beausoleil, and two women, Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, to the home of an acquaintance named Gary Hinman. Their orders were supposedly to retrieve money from Hinman and kill him if he refused. 

CHARLES MANSON

It’s all crap. You don’t have to look it up, you just have to look at it.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Nobody sent me over to recruit Gary to the family. He was as much of the so-called family as I was and I wasn’t a part of the family.

NARRATOR

Bobby Beausoleil contends that in the aftermath of Bernard Crowe shooting, Manson’s arrangement with the biker gang made them a constant presence at the ranch. Two weeks before the Sharon Tate murders, Beausoleil says the Straight Satans were looking for drugs. Beausoleil sold them mescaline he got from his former roommate Gary Hinman. Beausoleil maintains that the day after the drug deal the Straight Satans demanded their money back claiming the drugs were bad.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

I don’t really believe you I think they were trying to get the drugs for free. They were playing me for a sucker. There wasn’t any bad drugs or anything like that.

CHARLES MANSON

Beausoleil was a strong individual. Yeah, he was in trouble with the motorcycle gang. And, we were dealing and wheeling underworld man. That’s what motorcycle gangs do, you know. In other words, the strongest survive. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

There is a property report of Gary Hinman. And in that property, report they list homemade scales with white powder. They didn’t test it for it mescaline, so we don’t know if it was or not. To me that’s evidence.

NARRATOR

With the Straight Satans threat looming, Bobby Beausoleil claims he went to Gary Hinman’s house to retrieve the money from the drug deal and return it to the biker gang.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

I went there for one thing and that was to collect the money. And ‘cause they asked to come along, Mary had a relationship with Gary, and I don’t know why Susan Atkins asked to come along. I didn’t see any problem going there. I figure it was going to be no problem to get the money back and, you know, and come back and give it to ‘em, and it was going to be done.

NARRATOR

As recalled by Bobby Beausoleil, when Gary Hinman refused to return the money the confrontation escalated. Along with Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, Beausoleil stayed at the house for two days. Beausoleil thought he could reason with Hinman to give up the money. They wrestled over a gun which went off but hit no one. During the confrontation, someone called the Ranch to ask for help. At some point, Bobby Beausoleil gained the upper hand and made Gary Hinman sign over his cars.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

So he had these two old wrecks and they were, I figured between the two of them they were worth maybe a grand. The grand that they were saying I owed them. 

NARRATOR

With the pink slips in hand they prepared to leave. As they were walking out the door Manson unexpectedly rushed in with a sword and cut Gary Hinman across the face.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie had slashed his face and left me with the problem. And I didn’t know how to get out of it, you know, I didn’t know how to get away without getting arrested, unless I killed him.

NARRATOR

After the murder, someone wrote on the walls in Gary Hinman’s blood.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

To be honest with you, I don’t remember a lot that happened immediately after my having killed Gary. That really devastated me. My memories of what happened afterwards have never really been clear.

NARRATOR

A black panther paw print was drawn on the wall along with the words POLITICAL PIGGY.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It was in everyone’s minds. Everyone believed Charlie had killed a black panther, according to what he had told everyone. There was an intent to throw the investigators of the trail.

NARRATOR

From this perspective, Gary Hinman’s murder was directly related to the Bernard Crowe shooting. They staged the crime scene to frame the Black Panthers because they feared retaliation. At the same time, Manson’s intent to make the others complicit had been unexpectedly furthered. This prevented members of the group from telling the police about what Manson had done. According to police records on Wednesday, August sixth, two days before the Sharon Tate murders, Bobby Beausoleil was arrested in one of Gary Hinman’s cars. 

CHARLES MANSON

I was in San Diego when that happened.

BARBRA HOYT

I heard he got arrested for murder. I thought that the police had just made it up. No, I didn’t believe it.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

I think it’s important to look at the timing of this. You’re looking at these murders that happened on Cielo and Waverly are like two days later, and it’s very important that they happened then rather than a month later or two weeks earlier. So, that indicates that they we’re a reaction to Bobby’s arrest and the idea of getting him out of prison by committing copycat murders. 

  NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, two days after Bobby Beausoleil was arrested the group planned to commit another murder. This turned out to be the murders of Sharon Tate and those who were at her home on August eighth. The group planned to stage the crime scene to make it appear as if Gary Hinman’s killer was still on the loose. They reasoned this would compel the police to let Bobby Beausoleil go. Charles Manson admitted that this was their thinking.

CHARLES MANSON

He was in prison. He was in the LA county jail when it happened. See we we’re all in a brotherhood. We were all in one family and we were helping the brother. It happened to be Beausoleil. 

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

He told other people he was trying to send a message to me, and others make the police think that they had the wrong person.  

NARRATOR

According to Bobby Beausoleil this is not the entire picture but reaffirms Manson’s deeper motive. Committing a copycat murder to free Beausoleil would make the others complicit, preventing more members of the group from potentially talking to the police about the Bernard Crowe shooting.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Depending on the orientation of whoever he was talking to he would say things that would support some sort of agenda that he had.

NARRATOR

Manson’s agenda comes full circle when you consider that he still harbored a grudge against Terry Melcher for the song Manson had contributed to the Beach Boys. According to the alternate theory, this is why four members of the commune ventured out to Terry Melcher’s house, two days after Bobby Beausoleil’s arrest, on August eighth, nineteen sixty-nine.

BLACK.

BOARD - LOS ANGELES, AUGUST 8TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE SHARON TATE MURDERS 

BARBRA HOYT

I remember after dinner in the backhouse, and I remember Charlie and Tex talking in the corner, and it was like there was black around them. It was just like evil around them, a black cloud around them.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

There were people at the ranch who owed Charlie favors, and he said you owe me, I’m collecting. Do something to get Bobby outta jail, I don’t care what you do but do it.

CHARLES MANSON

I gave my life to what I thought was a brother. Every time I do that man I always end up on the short end of everything because I’m, I’m stupid. I can’t do school books stuff. I’m a stupid hillbilly is what it boils down to.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

I know he told Tex Watson, “You either take care of the problem or get on the road.” Tex Watson could have just left the ranch and there wouldn’t have been any “Tate-Labianca” murders.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex didn’t say that I told him to tell him anything. I told him four or five different ways.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Acquaintance)

He don’t tell nobody to do nothing. He don���t tell you to do anything today. He can convince you that that’s your idea, because usually it is your idea.

CHARLES MANSON

You can do what you want to do when you make up your mind and you decide that that’s what you’re going to do.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

What they didn’t volunteer to do was something they didn’t understand which was his need to protect himself. He manipulated them.

SUSAN ATKINS  

I remember when we first went in, one of the people said ‘who are you’ and Tex said, ‘I’m the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s business”. I don’t think Charles Manson’s mind was in control of Tex’s mind that night. Charlie’s human too, and his mental powers are just as limited, maybe not as limited as other humans, but there was an evil force in control of Tex that night.

BARBRA HOYT

They died so horribly, I don’t know if people really think about how. You just how much they suffered. You know, I think about Sharon Tate and she must have been insane with fear by the time they got to her.

PHIL KAUFMAN

What does it take to have somebody tell you to go and kill people, for what reason? I couldn’t conceive what could allow them to be influenced to go down… They didn’t kill people they butchered people, and these are the people that I’d been sleeping with.

NARRATOR

When Susan Atkins used Sharon Tate’s blood to write on a door, it appeared to call back to the murder of Gary Hinman. The police never made this connection. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Sherriff’s homicide was handling the Hinman murders and two of the homicide investigators went to the Tate investigators and said look we have this murder of Gary Hinman, blood on the wall, in Hinman’s blood. So they said, look we think these are connected, the LAPD investigators sent them away said, nah, they’re not connected.

 NARRATOR

The prosecution maintained that the events of that summer were not connected. They claimed that Charles Manson led a religious cult and was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, inspired by the Beatles.

DIRECTOR (OS)

If they’re trying to frame black people, why aren’t they writing “kill white people” or something very obvious?

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Probably because they didn’t think of it. That of course, you know, people would connect blacks because of the Beatles white album, so some black would figure it out and tell somebody, oh ya know (cough), Beatles, this is part of the murders--

DIRECTOR (OS)  

It just seems like a lot of dots to connect.

 BLACK.

BOARD - LOS ANGELES, SATURDAY - AUGUST 9TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE LABIANCA MURDERS

NARRATOR

If members of the group killed Sharon Tate and others as a copycat murder in order to free Bobby Beausoleil, then why did  they commit more murders the next night?

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

The second night at the LaBianca’s was to cover up for what he had done the first night, which was kill a house full of people. He didn’t realize it was gonna be this big thing that had unfolded up there at the house on Cielo. He didn’t know that Terry Melcher had rented the place out so it basically turned into a fiasco.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It was the weekend so, he’s going out the next night because he’s gotta cover up those Tate murders, because that’s going to get out and that’s going to be nasty.

DIRECTOR (VO)

Who did kill those people? 

CHARLES MANSON

The people that told you they killed ‘em. They said on the witness stand, yeah I killed ‘em.

NARRATOR

On the second night, another member of the group became complicit; Nineteen-year-old Leslie Van Houten.

PETER CHIARAMONTE

  (Leslie Van Houten’s former  

  Boyfriend).

Tex was Leslie’s boyfriend, ok, at the time. When Pat is explaining, what happened to Leslie, as I understand it, Pat was shaken by what she’d done but Leslie felt that she had to prove herself now, we’re gonna go out again and this has to be done. She must have been told at that point the line, “We’re doing it for Bobby.”  

NARRATOR

Catherine Gilles, also known as Cappi, recalls seeing Leslie Van Houten get into a car with Patricia Krenwinkel and others.

CAPPI

I had no idea where they were going but Katie and Lulu were the closest people in the universe to me. That girl was my other me and Katie was like our big sister. And they were in the car, and they we’re going somewhere without me, you know, and so I tried to get in the car and they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t know why. They were protecting me.

NARRATOR

Manson often speaks in riddles. This ensured many members of the group were not aware of what was going on.

CHARLES MANSON

What’s real has different levels. You could go on certain levels of reality, that other people don’t really understand at all. And they call it insanity.

NARRATOR

The group drove to Los Feliz and parked near an intersection on Waverly Drive. Inside the home to the west was an affluent couple who owned a chain of grocery stores, named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

PHIL KAUFMAN

It was a place that they knew. They had been to Harold’s house which is right next door.

NARRATOR

This audio recording from the LA District Attorney shows that the house next door to LaBianca residence was once occupied by a man named Harold True, who knew Manson and the girls.

Harold True interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970:

They called and asked if they could spend the night in the house. And we let them stay the night. At Waverly? Yeah it was a big house, a lot of people stayed there. “Now how did he get your… have your phone number to call?” I don’t know. I guess maybe I gave him a map.

PHIL KAUFMAN

When I skipped the country and the time of my marijuana bust, Harold True gave me his passport. He had never had a passport so I got a passport in Harold’s name. And then when I got out and I went to see Charlie, I took Harold along. Harold was a big old lumpy guy and you know he thought he might get laid.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

They were camping out with the bus there and living at Harold True’s place, and the neighbours called the cops.  They had to leave there because the neighbours called the cops. And the neighbours were the LaBiancas.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie picked people he had grudges against. He didn’t just pick people at random.

NARRATOR

This adds to the alternate theory that on the second night Manson continued manipulating the others.  It wasn’t because he would rule the world after a race war, instead it was a series of interconnected events. It began with the Bernard Crowe shooting, which led to the Gary Hinman murder and Bobby Beausoliel’s arrest. This culminated in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders. A significant amount of the commune became complicit and Manson’s outstanding grudges were satisfied. There is one additional piece that appears to support this theory, Charles Manson’s actions after the LaBianca murders. According to Tex Watson’s account, summarized from numerous public statements, he and Charles Manson went up to the LaBianca house and broke in through the back door. Manson woke up Leno LaBianca and tied him up. They retrieved Rosemary LaBianca from her bedroom and tied her up, before threatening to kill the couple in the living room. Manson disputes Tex Watson’s version of events.

CHARLES MANSON

What has he told you about me? Everything that’s going to help him, right? You are for you. I am for me. I’m for Charlie. I didn’t kill nobody.

NARRATOR

It’s undisputed that Manson drove to the LaBianca house and that he went into the house for some period of time. According to the trial transcripts, Linda Kasabian is asked; Question, how long after he left the car did he return to the car? Answer, I remember we all lit up cigarettes and we smoked about three-quarters of a Pall Mall cigarette, however long that takes.

The question is, what did Charles Manson do once he left the car?  

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

If you’re looking at three quarters of a cigarette, it’s five minutes. When you’re looking at what Tex says, there’s just not enough time.

NARRATOR

Manson and Tex Watson went up to the house. After a few minutes Manson returned, at which point Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten went into the house. Manson then drove away with the others.

Those in the car claim that while in the house Manson had retrieved Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet which police later found twenty miles away in a gas station bathroom located in Sylmar.  

According to the prosecution Manson conspired to plant the wallet in a black neighbourhood, reasoning a black person would use the credit cards and be connected to the murders. This would help spur the impending race war. But this motive is contradicted by the evidence. Census data from the nineteen seventies shows that Sylmar was not a black neighbourhood.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Obviously, he got screwed up. The wallet got planted in the wrong city, I mean there’s no point in planting it in a white area and having a white person use the credit cards. That defeats the whole purpose of blaming the murders on the blacks.

NARRATOR

If framing black people wasn’t Manson’s motive, then what was he trying to achieve in the few minutes that he was in the LaBianca house? And, what was the reason for taking Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet? 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

My theory is, Charlie goes up to the house. Tex Watson says in his book when they get in there Mr. LaBianca says “Hey, what do you all want, you all want money? I can get you money.” Let’s say Charlie did accept the money offer. My Theory is Charlie got the money and then he left, that’s why he left.

 NARRATOR

No one disputes that once Manson left, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten stayed in the house and murdered the LaBiancas.  

 STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

With Leno LaBianca there was a carving fork protruding out his abdomen and Krenwinkel had written on his abdomen WAR. They found a knife with the handle sticking out of one end the blade traversing his neck, severing a carotid artery and part of the blade sticking out of the other side.

NARRATOR

During the LaBianca murders, all agree that Charles Manson took the rest of the group to Venice. The prosecution insisted that Manson went to Venice to get his followers to commit another murder. Once again, the motive was to frame a black person and fuel the race war. According to trial testimony, Manson allegedly took his followers to the apartment building located here. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

The address to that apartment building is, you could literally say a stone’s throw from the Straight Satans clubhouse in Venice. You mean that Straight Satan biker gang that Charlie owed money to? Yeah that biker gang, they were in Venice. 

NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, after Manson shot Bernard Crowe he feared retaliation and enlisted the Straight Satans for protection. Bobby Beausoleil compromised this protection by getting into a conflict with the Straight Satans over a drug deal.  

If Manson took enough money from the LaBianca residence, he could have gone to Venice to settle the debt that Bobby Beausoleil owed the Straight Satan’s from the Gary Hinman drug deal. This would’ve regained their protection from the Black Panthers.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It’s what, 4 in the morning, 3 or 4 in the morning? They didn’t go back to ranch, they went to Venice. That’s how pressing this was for Charlie. They could wait until Monday to do business. I think they went to Venice to pay off the Straight Satans.

CHARLES MANSON

When you’re in the know with somebody that’s in the know. You don’t play games with them. 

BRIAN DAVIS

That next morning Charlie sent Linda Kasabian down to the jail with a message for Bobby Beausoleil, don’t say anything, everything’s cool. Why all of a sudden is everything cool? By Monday before any court proceedings started they get a message to Bobby, everything’s cool, we’ve taken care of everything. Don’t say a word about nothing. We’ll have you out of there soon. 

NARRATOR

By Monday morning seven people were dead but the string of murders was not finished.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

The neighboring rancher, he didn’t like the Manson family. So, what was going on then is, they we’re trying to get them off the ranch. 

NARRATOR  

It’s been long speculated that the neighboring rancher may have recruited a ranch hand named Donald “Shorty” Shae to rid Spahn Ranch of the group. Manson believed Shae had tipped off the police leading to a raid.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

You know there was definitely no love lost between Shorty Shae and Charles Manson as far as I can gather. 

NARRATOR

On August sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine, twenty-six members of the commune were arrested for suspicion of auto theft. Because of a date error, the search warrant was ruled invalid and all were released. The police had no idea that they were connected to the murders making national news. When they returned to Spahn Ranch, Donald Shae was never seen again.

BARBRA HOYT

I went to sleep in a little trailer. I heard a scream, And then I heard more screaming and it just didn’t end and it was horrific. It was horrible, and it kept going on and on and I recognized Shorty’s voice.

NARRATOR

After Donald Shae’s disappearance, Manson and the commune left Spahn Ranch.  

 BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Cappi suggested that her grandmother had a place out there in Death Valley, when he was looking for a place to go. They went out there and looked at it. He fell in love with it. And he said this is it. This is it, this is our utopia.

NARRATOR

The land in Death Valley was an isolated mining property owned by Catherine Gilles’ grandmother. After the murders, Charles Manson and the group stayed there until October of nineteen sixty-nine.    

CAPPI

We went to the desert because of me. My favorite place besides the ocean. I was born on the ocean and I lived in the desert, and I love the desert so I offered up the desert.

NARRATOR

Just like authorities had in Los Angeles, Inyo County officers raided the Death Valley ranch on August twelfth, nineteen sixty-nine for suspicion of auto theft.

Twenty-four members of the group we’re arrested and once again police had no idea they were involved in any of the murders. The killers were imprisoned except for Patricia Krenwinkel, who went on both nights, and Tex Watson.  

 GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

After the murders, Pat Krenwinkel went back to Alabama, Tex Watson went back to Texas. Nobody was holding them around. 

NARRATOR

Records show that Linda Kasabian was bailed out by her parents and left California. Before anyone else could arrange for bail, Susan Atkins confessed.  

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Susan Atkins is the one that broke the case. I mean they didn’t know that it was Charles Manson or Susan Atkins or anything until she blabbed.

PHIL KAUFMAN

That was her, that was very much her. Charlie would have been better killing her and he probably would have gotten away with it a little bit longer.

NARRATOR

While inside the country jail, Susan Atkins told her cellmates that she was involved in the murder of Sharon Tate. One of the first people Atkins confessed to was a call girl named Virginia Graham.  

VIRGINIA GRAHAM

Susan Atkins, she plopped herself down and she sat on the bunk and we started talking, and she presumed to tell me how stupid the police were, and they were dumb. She said to me, “You know those murders up benedict canyon?” She said you know who did it don’t you and I said no, and she said cold as can be “you’re looking her”.  She didn’t say Helter Skelter to me. I found out about, Helter Skelter, later on. But I don’t recall her telling me Helter Skelter.

NARRATOR

Susan Atkins was denied compassionate release in two thousand and eight, and died from brain cancer in prison. However, in nineteen sixty-nine the DA was willing to overlook the brutality of her actions.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

The deal with Susan Atkins, the prosecution was going to let her plead to second degree murder. Sharon was begging for her life. She was being held by Susan Aktins and – she said “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me. I just want to have my baby.”

SUSAN ATKINS

I felt nothing, I felt absolutely nothing for her as she begged for the life of her baby.  

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor) She said “Look bitch, I don’t care about you or your child. You’re going to die and I don’t feel a thing behind it.” Having Susan Atkins as the witness that wouldn’t have gone over to well with the jury.

NARRATOR  

The prosecutor who was working out the deal was the author of HELTER SKELTER, Vincent Bugliosi.

DANIEL SIMONE

Vincent Bugliosi was an outstanding prosecutor. But if one really we’re to dig much deeper, what emerges is he was a womanizer. He loved attention, he was over-ambitious

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

He had a guy sitting in court that I thought was a reporter but it turned out he was Curt Gentry, who Vince had hired to write a book on the case. He didn’t tell me that he was writing a book during the trial. So, yeah, he didn’t tell anybody it. This was gonna make him rich and famous.

CHARLES MANSON

It’s all underworld solider. Who you think the president is? Where you think his office is, in my cell?

NARRATOR

This is the Helter Skelter theory that was presented to the jury in the Charles Manson trials.

NARRATOR

Manson formed a cult of obedient followers who wanted to drop out of society. Their connection to the Bernard Crowe shooting is unknown as the motive and was not explored by the prosecution.  

Manson wanted to be a rock star and was obsessed with the Beatles. He had also met the Beach Boys.

Through the Beach Boys, Manson came to resent Terry Melcher and considered Melcher’s house a representation of the establishment.

Manson believed the Beatles were predicting a race war through hidden messages in their songs, and he needed money to supplement his preparation.

Because of this, Manson further brainwashed his cult to believe in the race war and ordered them to kill Gary Hinman.

Meanwhile, to start the race war, Manson decided to murder white people and frame black people. He indirectly ordered his followers to kill whoever lived at Terry Melcher’s house.

Manson also chose another house at random and ordered its occupants to be killed.

Manson’s plot was to frame black people by having his followers leave indirect references to the Beatles White Album at the crime scenes. Manson believed that both the police and black people would understand these references, and this would lead into the race war.

Once the race war began, Manson and the family would hide in a secret cave in the desert. After the war, Manson would emerge and become the leader of the victorious black army. At that point he would rebuild the world.  

This is the theory that convicted Charles Manson and others, and gained prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi fame, and a best-selling book.  

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what the DA said. Everybody will tell you what they think about me, according to what they want to use me for. All I’m looking for is someone to help me. I’ve always been by myself alone.

Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.

Anything on the recordings that you know of whereby he speaks of his philosophy of Helter Skelter, the ruination and damnation of this world? No.

PHIL KAUFMAN

I was really not a friendly witness. I was on parole for one thing, I really didn’t, you know, want to get connected with these people. And this DA comes out to my house and tries to get stuff out of me that wasn’t there.

CHARLES MANSON  

They know how to milk the cow man. And they do it so well the cow don’t even know it.

NARRATOR

The Helter Skelter theory is not only sensational, it establishes the elements of murder and conspiracy under California law. To be found guilty, the defendant must agree to commit a crime as well as commit an overt act in furtherance of that agreement.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

Without proving the Helter Skelter motive there was no evidence whatsoever that Manson wanted these murders to happen. You have to be a party to it, you can’t just know about it.

 CHARLES MANSON

I didn’t break the law because I’ve been in prison all my life and I know the law. I know what conspiracy is. I’m not going to conspire to do something. That’s kind of stupid isn’t it? I’m not a stupid dude. I’m dumb but I’m not stupid.  

NARRATOR

This is the implication of what Manson is saying. It’s not that he wasn’t involved in the events of the summer of sixty-nine. Manson admits to shooting Bernard Crowe, his involvement with drugs, the Straight Satans, and the motive of getting Bobby out of prison. But when it came to the murders he maintains he purposely kept himself at a distance. 

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I thought it was a horrible case against him. Remember he was not at the scene. He was forty miles away when the murders took place so he was an armchair murderer.

NARRATOR

The Helter Skelter theory was how the prosecution demonstrated that Manson was guilty of conspiracy and murder under the requirements of the law. They described a scenario where he ordered the murders without actually saying the words.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

I mean they all knew about Helter Skelter but we didn’t have any evidence from that specific night that Manson said go out and start Helter Skelter. He just said “Go with Tex and do what Tex tells you to do”. 

CHARLES MANSON

They still won’t admit the truth. They had no evidence against me, none. 

NARRATOR

There was no evidence that Manson himself killed anyone. The prosecution said that Manson was guilty under the rule of “vicarious responsibility”. The notion that Manson’s plot to start a race war made him responsible for all the crimes committed to further it.

BRIAN DAVIS  

Remember, Vince is trying to push the agenda that Charlie just came out of nowhere and said, hey, we gotta start a race war -  Bernard Crowe, drug dealing, grand theft auto, none of that has anything to do with this. If Vince introduces anything outside of that it starts to wash away the Helter Skelter theory. Then you have that reasonable doubt creeping in. Well maybe it has something to do with the drug deal? And Vince doesn’t want you going down that road. 

CHARLES MANSON

People don’t want to look at it from the point of view that brings them to something they don’t like. 

NARRATOR

The prosecution used the race war as the basis of their legal argument. If the alternate theory is correct, might they have ignored the true nature of events to gain a conviction? Whatever Manson’s crimes are, do the ends justify the means?

GARY LAWYER  

I think if he had had a competent lawyer, he would of either walked on the trial or walked on appeal because there just wasn’t sufficient testimony to convict him of anything.

NARRATOR

To convict Manson the prosecution’s entire case depended on one of the murderers corroborating their theory. On December second, nineteen sixty-nine, four months after the death of Sharon Tate, the last of the murderers was captured. Linda Kasabian surrendered in New Mexico and returned to California. She immediately met with her attorney Gary Fleischman.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I talked to her and the only conversation I can tell you, I said keep your mouth shut and keep it shut in that jail. Don’t talk to anybody about this ever. I can’t tell you the conversation I had with her but I was lead to believe that the murders up there started long before the Tate-Labianca case. I can’t describe what she told me but it was scary, the whole thing was scary.

NARRATOR  

At that time, Linda Kasabian had few options because Susan Atkins had already turned state’s witness. According to Gary Fleischman, he had Kasabian sabotage Susan Atkins’s testimony to bolster Kasabian’s bargaining position with prosecutors.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I had Linda pass kites to her, in the jail. A kite is a little letter, saying in Charlie talk, Charlie talk being ‘the DA is your lawyer, Charlie is the DA’. And this Atkins was a little nuts, and she then refused to testify. So now they we’re left with Linda, period – and then negotiations started.

First they offered me murder in the second degree, I said no, then they offered me voluntary manslaughter, I said no.

She was technically guilty of first degree murder before and after the fact.

NARRATOR

Linda Kasabian was one of the four who participated in the Sharon Tate murders and was with Charles Manson the night of the LaBianca murders. Prior to that, she had only been with the group for about thirty days and had spent little time with Manson himself.

CHARLES MANSON

Nobody ratted on me, except, she didn’t rat because she didn’t know anything. What they did was, they got some of the women that didn’t know me. I can’t get in their mind.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

So, we typed up an immunity agreement and the immunity agreement said, Linda Kasabian will receive immunity if she testifies to the truth in the so-called Manson murders. The truth is as follows. I knew exactly what was necessary to convict him, and whether that was true or not it was wasn’t my business to decide. That was Vince’s business. I said Linda if you testify to that you’re going to walk out of that courtroom. 

 NARRATOR

Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles “Tex” Watson and Leslie Van Houten were all charged with murder and conspiracy. Tex Watson was arrested in Texas and faced extradition to California. With Linda Kasabian ready to testify, Watson was not brought back in time for Manson’s trial.

BRIAN DAVIS  

Tex sat out a whole year and watched that trial develop. If he had brought Tex in with him there’s no way he would have got that conviction.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

They wanted to get rid of me. I had gone to Stanford. I was really the only lawyer in the place who knew what the hell was going on. We filed a very detailed motion to get the case out of LA county.

It had like a hundred newspaper clippings and I claimed that the bad publicity was instigated by the prosecutors and that’s enough to get the case dismissed at least on appeal.

That case should have never been tried in Los Angeles county. But when we went to make a deal we withdrew the motion.

CAPPI

You should have seen my face when, when I was sitting in the in with the demure act this whole gold cross that she was fingering, and got up on the stand and said “I’m just an angel sent here from Heaven, to tell the world that Charlie’s the devil not Jesus Christ”.

CHARLES MANSON  

Listen and learn. The courtroom shows our justice. The courtroom is the eye of the social consciousness. You’ve got to go along with the courtroom. Right or wrong doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’m a mass murderer in the courtroom. 

DANIEL SIMONE

In this case, Bugliosi was brilliant. He had no rivals. It came down to who the jurors believed and Manson’s own conduct which was absolutely absurd.

CHARLES MANSON

They think they’re stealing me but all they’re doing is stealing what I’ve left for them to steal. In other words, they’re plagiarizing all my dreams but I left those on the bus stop.

BRIAN DAVIS  

It literally branded Charles Manson the most evil, dangerous man in the world.

CHARLES MANSON

There’s no end to my insanity. My insanity is so much genius I’ve got five heads in one hand.

DANIEL SIMONE

None of the defense attorneys challenged that Linda Kasabian’s testimony remained uncorroborated.

CAPPI

I know how involved she was and I won’t say, but she was definitely involved, yes. 

NARRATOR

When the trial wound to a close, those associated began to fear for their lives. Many changed their names in fear of reprisal.  

CHARLES MANSON  

Live and let live. You don’t let me live, you don’t live. That’s all. If you let me live, you live.

I you don’t let me live then you get your own judgment. Everybody gets to judge themselves. I didn’t want the job, you know.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

Charlie went like this to mean, meaning I’m going to cut your throat. And I said to him “Charlie, when you get out of jail I’m going to have a turkey neck and bring you a sharp knife to cut it.” He started laughing.

PHIL KAUFMAN

They came to my house twice to kill me. My neighbor said you know guys have been crawling over your fence.

STEPHEN KAY

One night during the first trial on my way to the parking lot where I had parked, Squeaky and Sandra Good snuck up behind me and said they were going to do to my house what was done at the Tate house. 

NARRATOR

Leslie Van Houten’s attorney, Ronald Hughes, went missing during the trial. Many have speculated about his disappearance.

STEPHEN KAY

I remember we broke for the weekend on a Friday afternoon. Manson pointed directly at Ronald Hughes and said, Attorney, I don’t ever want to see you in this courtroom again.” His body was found six months later but it was so badly decomposed that they couldn’t tell the cause of death.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I’ll bet your bottom dollar that he said something that got under Charlie’s skin, and Manson had him killed. I mean, he went up to (something) hot springs, and all of sudden he’s dead. I don’t believe it was an accident.

NARRATOR

After the first trial the Manson Family became infamous. Vincent Bugliosi published HELTER SKELTER the best-selling true crime book of all time. This began decades of movies, books, and TV shows, portraying Charles Manson as the incarnation of evil.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL  

It’s such an insidiously created book - It’s a curse having to live with it.

CHARLES MANSON

The DA fucked up man. Convicted me in the press, didn’t convict me in court. I got my own media.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson and the rest continued on through the courts. They received additional death sentences for the murder of Donald Shea based primarily on the testimony of Barbara Hoyt.

Tex Watson received a separate trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders and was sentenced to death like the others. The following year, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and all of their sentences were commuted to life in prison.

BRIAN DAVIS

The first trial, everybody was brainwashed, Tex was brainwashed, everybody went and killed for Charlie. But when Tex gets to trial he wasn’t brainwashed, he acted on his own.

NARRATOR

In November of nineteen sixty-nine, Bobby Beausoleil was tried for the murder of Gary Hinman. This was before the DA had labelled Charles Manson as the mastermind. Beausoleil’s first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict. There was no mention of Helter Skelter.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL

The first trial was just a quiet little trial in Santa Monica, the Jury was hung 8 to 4. I didn’t even testify because the case was really very weak. 

NARRATOR  

In a second trial, which took place after Manson was charged, Bobby Beausoleil was rebranded as a “member of The Manson Family”. He and Susan Atkins were sentenced to death alongside Manson for the murder of Gary Hinman.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL

They brought up this race war thing and all of that. It was horrible, man. They did a lot of insidious things.

NARRATOR  

Many of those convicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders remain in jail. Leslie Van Houten has been granted parole on numerous occasions but because of her association with Charles Manson her parole has been continually overturned.  

STEPHEN KAY

I don’t think that she deserves to get out. They we’re all lucky that they didn’t suffer the death penalty.

RICH PFIEFFER

I’m going to get her out. The DA is not operating fairly. Just follow the law, that’s all I’m asking.

NARRATOR

Lynette Squeaky Fromme served thirty-five years in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Fromme was paroled in two thousand and nine. Vincent Bugliosi died in two thousand and fifteen. His book HELTER SKELTER has become gospel in terms of information on Charles Manson.

NARRATOR

Manson remains in California State Prison, Corcoran, where he will almost certainly live for the remainder of his life.

CHARLES MANSON  

That’s hard for me to believe that all this time has gone by man.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson is not an innocent man but does it matter how we know that? Should those in power be allowed to construct their own truth in the pursuit of justice?

CHARLES MANSON

I see things as they really are in truth. You got a constitution in the United States, and they read and study it in school but they never really understand the validity of it, and how powerful it really is.

GRAY WOLF

I don’t care who it is, if somebody doesn’t get a fair trial then we’re all in trouble.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

Do I think he’s suffered an injustice, not really (laughs), not in my heart of hearts. But as a matter of litigation, yes he did suffer an injustice. Whether morally he suffered an injustice I don’t think so.

NARRATOR

This leaves some to ask, if the prosecution had pursued the alternate theory with its brutal but less sensational elements, would anyone even know who Charles Manson is? And, would he be sitting in jail today? 

MANSON

I believe what I’m told to believe. Don’t you?

THE END

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

This sex toy company uses niche meme accounts to spread the joys of masturbation

May is National Masturbation Month, and we're celebrating with Feeling Yourself, a series exploring the finer points of self-pleasure.

It's 2019, and people are finally starting to understand that it isn't just dudes who are allowed to be horny. 

While social media platforms lag behind on allowing sponsored posts for vibrators and other sextech, one sex toy company is getting around these barriers by advertising through something more organic: meme accounts. 

View this post on Instagram

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

A post shared by Unbound (@unboundbabes) on Apr 20, 2019 at 6:09pm PDT

Male sexual enhancement has long been advertised openly. Older men toss footballs and describe how Viagra rejuvenated their love lives. Condom ads run in the same traditionally masculine tone as whiskey and beer spots. Sure, we've seen ads for menstrual products, where overly cheery women spike volleyballs on the beach and sprint across stretches of wildflowers as if their uteri weren't betraying them at that very moment. But products focused on female sexual health — and on pleasure, specifically — remain shrouded in shame. Companies in the sextech space face difficulty securing funding for new products and often can't advertise using traditional channels. 

As a result sex tech companies have increasingly relied on social media to promote their products. Aesthetically pleasing sex toys found a home on Instagram a while back. (Vox dove into the many companies whose minimalist earth-toned Instagram grids echo those of beauty and skincare brands.) But Unbound, a sexual wellness company founded in 2014, takes a different approach. 

Leaning in to chaotic horniness

The company's Instagram grid is curated chaos. Unbound also posts ethereal portraits of female and non-binary fans with their toys, but the soul of its Instagram presence is in the memes about eating ass and canceling plans to play with yourself instead.  

"When it comes to subjects that make us feel vulnerable," Unbound CEO Polly Rodriguez told Mashable during a phone call. "The best thing to make people more comfortable is to laugh at the truths we all know are real but maybe don't talk about."

Buying toys for the first time can be an intimidating experience, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. Traditionally, sex shops were crowded with overwhelmingly flesh-colored silicone molded into equally overwhelming phallic shapes. For decades, Rodriguez says, toys for women were designed by men, based on cis male genitals. When she was diagnosed with cancer and treatment forced her into menopause at the age of 21, a friend who was a nurse recommended buying a vibrator to get a hold of her sex drive again. Rodriguez says she, "questioned why they all had to look like penises." 

SEE ALSO: How mutual masturbation can help close the orgasm gap

She added that the packaging on the toys depicted women "in lingerie with big boobs and the hair," and said she didn't see herself in them. Unbound products are more whimsical and otherworldly than conventionally sexy — one of its vibrators is literally shaped like an alien spaceship. Rodriguez says when it came to designing these toys, she wanted people to feel comfortable leaving it out on their nightstand. 

The fact that Unbound's toys are rarely shaped like any sort of genital almost makes their Instagram page more approachable for first-time buyers who may be more timid about their desires. It also naturally paves the way for a more chaotically horny, relatable social media landscape. 

View this post on Instagram

MEET SAUCY: a body-safe silicone vibrator with magnetic USB charging capabilities. Haptic response technology means the harder you squeeze, the harder it vibrates. Waterproof so u can rub one out while u rub-a-dub-dub 💦 LINK IN BIO 2 SHOP. 🛸💫💙

A post shared by Unbound (@unboundbabes) on Feb 18, 2019 at 3:44pm PST

"That mentality of not giving a fuck relates to a lot of the audience," Rodriguez said, explaining the company's shitpost-y Instagram presence. "We want to follow meme accounts because they make us laugh."

A shift in the spon con landscape

Although Unbound really started taking off in 2016, at the height of color-coordinated, well-planned grids, Instagram users are moving away from avocado toast and selfies against saturated mural walls. As the Atlantic noted in an article about the decline of the perfect Instagram grid, "Fast-rising young influencers such as Emma Chamberlain, Jazzy Anne, and Joanna Ceddia all reject the notion of a curated feed in favor of a messier and more unfiltered vibe."

Unbound was ahead of the times. When Glossier's millennial pink-themed grid was the gold standard for Instagram accounts, Rodriguez said she let her former intern and now social media manager Emily Malinowski take the wheel. 

"Emily was like we're just gonna post some weird shit and see what happens," Rodriguez explained. "That's where Instagram's trending — people want lowbrow in experience but highbrow in intellect." 

But while Unbound's messaging and aesthetic resonated with its audience, Instagram itself still has a long way to go when it comes to sex positivity. The platform doesn't allow Unbound to use typical advertising methods like promoted posts, Rodriguez says, and frequently removes posts it claims are inappropriate. She calls it a "double edged sword."

"On one hand Instagram rewards brands and accounts that really care about visual aesthetic," Rodriguez explained. "At the same time, Instagram is constantly taking down accounts, banning accounts ... And yet male sexual wellness brands are allowed to promote."

Which is why Unbound uses the more unconventional advertising tactic of partnering with meme accounts. Many brands, of course, reach out to influencers to promote their products. But doing spon con through memes, like Unbound is doing, is brilliant. 

View this post on Instagram

i have two loves in my life and their names are gem and ollie💎💗 @unboundbabes just launched #UNArea69 and it’s amazingggg!! use the code barbie69 to get $10 off of $50+ from them and use the link in my bio

A post shared by ♏️ 🦂 scorpihoé 🦇♏️ (@prozac.barbie) on Jan 31, 2019 at 7:24pm PST

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Use my promo code 'clara' for 10% off orders of $35 or more at @unboundbabes ! Especially luv the bender bc it’s USB chargeable, and cute but powerful (and bendy, ofc). This is my ideal weekend honestly I wasted so much time on bad rebound sex before my vibe #ad

A post shared by clara (@meme_love_you_long_time) on Apr 30, 2019 at 7:27am PDT

View this post on Instagram

it’s a mEtApHySiCaL paradoxical law of science and physics and chemistry that u cannot escape, boys (vibrator wand featured is the Ollie by @unboundbabes, I have a code “ghosted69” for $10 off)

A post shared by haley (@ghosted1996) on Jan 31, 2019 at 4:21pm PST

Linda Lin found Unbound through the meme account @ghosted1996, and was drawn in by the fact that she didn't have to visit a "sleazy website" to buy sex toys.

"It made it seem like masturbation was normal to talk about," she said through Instagram DMs. "Seeing memes and small influencers promote this material makes you feel good about being open about your sexuality." 

Hyacinth Rios was surprised that when they first bought an Unbound toy and posted about it, a friend reached out to ask how they liked it. 

"I remember being surprised that someone who I considered to be like a normie or local (not that either is bad) would be open about sex toys," they said through Instagram DMs. "Which made me feel like it was probably super widely accepted now." 

Normalizing masturbation through memes

The fact that Unbound advertises through meme accounts is so smart because it not only normalizes sex toys in a humorous, approachable way, but because it presents them on the ground level. Sure, masturbation can be a sexy experience for personal awakening and empowerment, but it can also be something you do when you're bored. 

The memes depict masturbation as any other kind of self care, like popping on a face mask or blasting your favorite album. They aren't necessarily presented as wholesome — but the fact that so many of the memes are about spending a night smoking weed and flicking the bean out of boredom or distress is what makes masturbating seem so normal. 

By establishing a presence through Instagram memes, Unbound gets around Instagram's draconian rules for images surrounding female pleasure and also finds its way right into the lap of young people who are over cis men getting to have all the fun. 

"Meme accounts earn the respect of their audience because to be funny is difficult," Rodriguez concluded. 

She notes that not everyone can nail down the art of meme making — if you get it, you get it, and if you don't, you don't. We've seen brands attempt to get in touch with the youth and fail miserably. But by going straight to the meme makers, Unbound lessens the risk of making an embarrassing gaff. 

Masturbating isn't a big deal. Just ask the meme accounts of Instagram.

WATCH: Co-founder of Facebook now wants it broken up

[ucflibrary]

It’s Pride Month! Time for shouting out the celebration of the LGBTQIA community (yes, there are more than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender in the queer community). June was chosen to honor the Stonewall Riots which happened in 1969. Like other celebratory months, LGBT Pride Month started as a weeklong series of events and expanded into a full month of festivities.

In honor of Pride Month, UCF Library faculty and staff suggested books, movies and music from the UCF collection that represent a wide array of queer authors and characters. Additional events at UCF in June include “UCF Remembers…6.12.16” which commemorate the shooting at the Pulse nightclub last year. These four events scheduled for June 8 (to avoid a conflict with other Pulse memorial events) include a blood drive at Memory Mall, an art gallery exhibit, “Reflections on Pulse” tribute event, and a “UCF Remember” ceremony.

Click Keep Reading to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the 20 titles by or about LGBTQIA people suggested by UCF Library employees.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go war as the world from tearing itself. To further complicate things, each of the groups’ most promising followers (Patricia, a brilliant witch and Laurence, an engineering “wunderkind”) may just be in love with each other. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Been Here All Along by Sandy Hall Gideon always has a plan. It includes running for class president, becoming head of the yearbook committee, and having his choice of colleges. It does NOT include falling head over heels for his best friend, Kyle. It’s a distraction, it’s pointless—Kyle is already dating the head cheerleader, Ruby—and Gideon doesn’t know what to do. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later, her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview. This groundbreaking interview was followed over the years by other high-profile interviews, a documentary, the launch of her YouTube channel, a picture book, and her own reality TV series—I Am Jazz—making her one of the most recognizable activists for transgender teens, children, and adults. In her remarkable memoir, Jazz reflects on these very public experiences and how they have helped shape the mainstream attitude toward the transgender community. Making the journey from girl to woman is never easy—especially when you began your life in a boy’s body. Suggested by Davina Hovanec, Information Technology & Digital Initiatives

Black Wave by Michelle Tea It's 1999—and Michelle's world is ending. Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and meta-textual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility. But as she tries to make queer love and art without succumbing to self-destructive vice, the boundaries between storytelling and everyday living begin to blur, and Michelle wonders how much she'll have to compromise her artistic process if she's going to properly ride out doomsday. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History edited by Nan Alamilla Boyd, and Horacio N. Roque Ramrez Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History is the first book to provide serious scholarly insight into the methodological practices that shape lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer oral histories. Each chapter pairs an oral history excerpt with an essay in which the oral historian addresses his or her methods and practices. With an afterword by John D'Emilio, this collection enables readers to examine the role memory, desire, sexuality, and gender play in documenting LGBTQ communities and cultures. The book also examines the production of comparative racial and sexual identities and the relative strengths of same-sexuality, cross-sexuality, and cross-ideology interviewing. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America by John Waters John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads "I’m Not Psycho," he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion—and a celebration of America’s weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry. Suggested by Seth Dwyer, Circulation, and Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

Drag Teen: A Tale of Angst and Wigs by Jeffery Self A fantastic, fabulous, funny YA debut from Jeffery Self, one of the gay icons of the YouTube generation, that follows one high school student on a drag race to his future. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

From Broadway with Love: A Benefit Concert for Orlando produced by Michael J. Moritz Jr. and Van Dean Following the events that took place at Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, the Broadway and Orlando theatre communities will unite to perform From Broadway with Love: A Benefit Concert for Orlando – a healing night of music and dance to honor the 49 victims. Net proceeds raised from the performance (royalties and artist fees waived) by From Broadway With Love: A Benefit Concert for Orlando were donated equally between the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida, Hope and Help Center of Central Florida and Zebra Coalition. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo Amanda Hardy is the new girl in school. Like anyone else, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is keeping a secret, and she’s determined not to get too close to anyone. But when she meets sweet, easygoing Grant, Amanda can’t help but start to let him into her life. As they spend more time together, she realizes just how much she is losing by guarding her heart. She finds herself yearning to share with Grant everything about herself, including her past. But Amanda’s terrified that once she tells him the truth, he won't be able to see past it. Suggested by Rachel Mulvihill, Teaching & Engagement

Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People by Viviane Namaste Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex change: everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

La Cage Aux Folles directed by Edouard Molinaro La Cage aux Folles is a 1978 Franco-Italian comedy film and the first film adaptation of Jean Poiret's 1973 play of the same name. It is co-written and directed by Édouard Molinaro and stars Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault.Like the play, the film tells the story of a gay couple – Renato Baldi (Ugo Tognazzi), the manager of a Saint-Tropez nightclub featuring drag entertainment, and Albin Mougeotte (Michel Serrault), his star attraction – and the madness that ensues when Renato's son, Laurent (Rémi Laurent), brings home his fiancée, Andrea (Luisa Maneri), and her ultra-conservative parents (Carmen Scarpitta and Michel Galabru) to meet them. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

Orlando by Virginia Woolf Orlando doubles as first an Elizabethan nobleman and then as a Victorian heroine who undergoes all the transitions of history in this novel that examines sex roles and social mores. Suggested by Mary Page, Administration

Precious Perversions: Humor, Homosexuality, and the Southern Literary Canon by Tison Pugh Drawing from works of key queer, Southern writers, Pugh sets forth a new vision of Southern literature-- one illuminated by the humor of gay voices no longer at the margins. Dr. Pugh is an Associate Professor in the UCF English Department. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

Prelude to a Bruise by Saeed Jones How do we reckon our past without being ravaged by it? How do we use people, and their bodies, to express ourselves? Saeed Jones works as the editor of BuzzfeedLGBT. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Queer Praxis: Questions for LGBTQ Worldmaking edited by Dustin Bradley Goltz and Jason Zingsheim Amidst rapid advances of mainstream gay and lesbian platforms, questions of essential sexual identities, queered rituals of family, queered notions of intimacy, queer considerations of time, and the possibility and value of queered systems of relation are largely absent. Resisting the public face of a normative and homogenous gay and lesbian community, and embracing a broadened conception of queerness, this book brings together 29 writers – a diverse community of scholars, lovers, and activists – to explore queer theory and embodied experiences within interpersonal relations and society at large. Readers gain familiarity with key concepts in queer thought, but also observe how these ideas can be navigated and negotiated in the social world. Queer Praxis serves as a model for queer relationality, enlisting transnational feminist, critical communication, and performance studies approaches to build dialogue across and through differing subjectivities. Suggested by Carrie Moran, User Engagement Librarian

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he's pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he's never met. Suggested by Martha Cloutier, Circulation

The Gay Agenda: Claiming Space, Identity, and Justice edited by Gerald Walton The «gay agenda» is a rhetorical strategy deployed by the religious right and other social conservatives to magnify fear and hostility of queers. Queers are accused, among other things, of strategizing to recruit children into sexually deviant lifestyles; dismantling family and marriage as cornerstones of civilization; and forcing the entertainment industry and court systems to do their bidding. Queers certainly do have an agenda but it is not the one that the religious right claims it is. It is to assert their presence in the public space; claim and name their identities; and strategize for social justice in law, schools, and workplaces. The Gay Agenda: Claiming Space, Identity, and Justice claims and reclaims the language of «agenda» and turns the rhetoric of the religious right on its ear. The contributors provide insightful and sharp commentary on gay agendas for human rights, marriage and family, cultural influences, schooling and education, and politics and law. Suggested by Carrie Moran, User Engagement Librarian

The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village by Samuel R Delany In this unexpurgated edition of his award-winning autobiography, Samuel R. Delany beautifully, vividly,and insightfully calls up the 1960s era of exploration and adventure in the Lower East Side of New York City. He details his development as a black gay writer in an open marriage, with tertiary walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, W. H. Auden, and James Baldwin. Suggested by Mary Lee Gladding-Swan, Circulation

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R Delany Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as "family values." Unless we overcome our fears and claim our "community of contact," it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America. Suggested by Mary Lee Gladding-Swan, Circulation

Transgender Warriors Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg In this fascinating, personal journey through history, Leslie Feinberg uncovers persuasive evidence that there have always been people who crossed the cultural boundaries of gender. Transgender Warriors is an eye-opening jaunt through the history of gender expression and a powerful testament to the rebellious spirit. Suggested by Davina Hovanec, Information Technology & Digital Initiatives

[rainbowravioli]

Unpopular opinion: Victuuri is the pairing I love the most for the time being, but I wish people would stop holding it on a too high of a pedestal – worshipping it like a God or some sort of that. There are flaws that shouldn’t be overlooked and people should stop downgrading almost every single BL works or m/m pairings out there in favour of Victuuri and acting morally superior towards others. (1)

I know the problems in yaoi and I’m not going to defend it since I don’t even read and like yaoi but I understand that yaoi is purely fantasy for straight women as it stands for “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi” (no peak, no point, no meaning). Yaoi is also a subgenre of hentai – to quote Wikipedia, “In Japanese, hentai describes any type of perverse or bizarre sexual desire or act generally aimed at members of the opposite sex from the persons depicted.” (2) What I’m trying to say is, people shouldn’t compare Victuuri to yaoi in general because it’s two different genres and of course the point of YOI is not about having sex. This is also why in shonen-ai or gay couples in non-BL works tend to have healthier representation and YOI is not the first to have a canon gay (and healthy) couple in non-BL anime. Patalliro had did that long ago before some of us even born, and they even kissed (the first same-sex kiss featured in anime). (3) Heck, the two male leads in Samurai Flamenco got married before Victuuri was canon. I also know that yaoi and shonen-ai are outdated terms and BL is the right one but I don’t see much difference (Yaoi is BL with sex while shonen-ai is BL with no sex. I forgot to mention that hentai is not a genre, it’s anything that has porn). Thus, I don’t want to compare YOI to BL works because BL is mainly focusing on gay relationships while YOI is mainly focusing on figure skating or Yuuri’s growth. (4) And we all agree that YOI is not BL and the romance is just a subplot, right? But if I were to compare Victuuri with something, then I would compare it to some sports/bishonen anime that doesn’t have the guts to go any further than teasing (Free, Owari no Seraph, Boei-Bu, etc) to hook fangirls in. P.S. I love your opinions and meta! Don’t mind any of the haters, it’s not cool to hate somebody just because of conflicting opinions. Keep on writing, your meta is my drug :3 (5)

Awwww anon, you’re sweet

I agree with you that Victuuri is not BL and should not be compared to it. BL is a genre and while it has been developing in recent years (look at things like Doukyuusei), it still continues to exist within its own framework, with its own history, themes and tropes it typically conforms to. Yuri on Ice is not BL, it’s a sports anime that happens to include a same sex couple between two men. It’s also certainly not yaoi considering how the term is applied to works of a graphic sexual nature (though I would hesitate to call it a sub-genre of hentai, they have different histories and origins but I get where you’re coming from).

That said, I also agree with you that people should not use Yuri on Ice or Victuuri to diminish other works that portray healthy gay couples. That said, while Victuuri is far from perfect, both in canon (lack of resolution and communication problems brought upon by the finale) and in Word of God (~platonic wedding rings~ kill me) it did a lot of things right. It is extremely beloved for a reason and it gained notoriety over things like No.6 and Samurai Flamenco for a reason.

I’m a big fan of No.6 and it has that beautiful thing over Yuri on Ice where we had two kisses on screen that were not at all debatable on whether they were kisses or not or whether they were romantic or not. That said, Nezumi and Shion don’t exactly have a happy ending. And in fact, their entire story is less than happy. Understandable, considering they live in a distopia and are trying to take down their corrupt government. And again, I love No.6 and I love Nezushi, but Victuuri does have the “advantages” of: a) being from a more mainstream anime with a wider audience, b) having a relationship that is happy all the way through, even with problems, and ends happily, c) a more natural, arguably more realistic development to the relationship. Still, No.6 has been receiving constant praise since it aired by the people who watched it. It’s an important staple when it comes to representation.

Samurai Flamenco is a prickly case of what do you consider to be canon? Is it what you see on screen or what the author says? Which interestingly is a big question with Victuuri as well, but staying with Samurai Flamenco for a moment. If you go with what happens on screen than indeed, it’s canon, they end the series kind of engaged, and post-series material indicates they married. The problem specifically with this series is the infamous post-finale interview where the staff completely dismisses any sort of romantic interpretation of the relationship. Now, I say screw them, and so does most of the fandom. People basically ignore that interview, but we can’t deny it exists. Now a reason why people may not praise Samurai Flamenco for representation the way they do Victuuri probably comes down to how the series is not very well known and is also just downright weird. It’s also easy to dismiss the “let’s get married” scene as not being really serious (though I would argue that doing so is ignoring who Goto and Masayoshi are as people and how they develop through the series). I mean, compare it to the scene where Victor and Yuuri exchange rings and it’s a strikingly different set-up and mood.

That said these animes do have the huge advantage of having actual confirmation of characters’ feelings and romantic intentions through both words and gestures. It’s very unfortunate that Victuuri can be considered ambiguous at this point, what with the whole #kissorhug (and if it was a kiss did Victor mean it romantically) and ~platonic wedding rings~ (I die a little bit inside every time) and never ever saying “I love you” or referring to each other as a significant other. There’s also the matter of the staff interviews and the language they use to talk about Victuuri. Soulmates =/= romance. The Free! staff also calls their characters soulmates, but nobody is waving the banner of representation on that side of the fandom.

Let’s compare Victuuri to Free! then. I’m very familiar with it so I’ll go with that, since I’m aware of the other two examples you mentioned but haven’t actually watched them.

Free! made baiting into an art form. Good lord, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anime do baiting as well or as profitable as Free! is doing. Thing with Free! though, is that it profits from multiple pairings. You can combine the Free! boys in any whichever way you want. Sure, there’s more evidence for certain pairings, but lack of evidence never stopped the fandom (looking at SouMako). And things is, KyoAni wants you to do this, they want you to ship the characters and buy the shippy merchandise and they know exactly what they are doing with a lot of their content. That said, Free! has genuine emotion and development with its characters, which is part of why I think it’s so popular. There is depth there, whatever your preference amongst the main ships is. That helps sales. But they will never take that extra step with any pairing.

Yuri on Ice doesn’t play the field the way Free! does. Victor and Yuuri are very much exclusive in their affections. They don’t have romantic coded scenes with anyone besides each other and, other than Yuuri’s crush on Yuko, they are not shown to be attracted to anyone other than each other. Their relationship drives the story, while with Free! multiple relationships drive the story (which is normal, the main characters are a group and the main theme is friendship).

Now, going back to what I said above on how you consider canon - I consider Victuuri canon and nothing Kubo says in interviews will change what I saw on screen with my own eyes. My dear co-captain @soobaki on the other hand, doesn’t, because of the lack of resolution and confirmation from Word of God. This is interesting when compared to Free! however, because one must ask: what’s stopping Free! to be as canon with its ships as Victuuri? (spoiler alert it’s money but) And here I’m going to look at one of the big ones and one of the “unofficial official pairings” according to KyoAni merch from s2 going forward: MakoHaru.

MakoHaru never kiss on screen and they certainly don’t get engaged or exchange rings. But they have an extremely deep bond that goes beyond friendship that gets developed throughout the series. Oh and they get a heavily romantic coded love confession.

Oh but Rita, you say, that doesn’t count! That’s only platonic love! Look they are even talking about swimming and putting their relationship in swimming terms, the way they do for most of the series. It’s not romantic!

Ah, but Victuuri does the exact same thing with skating. Victor and Yuuri constantly talk about their relationship in skating terms and skating metaphors. And never once say “I love you”.

Then we have the things staff says in interviews. Some things said about MakoHaru were how “they are each other’s other half”, “their relationship is an inviolable sanctuary”, writing their dialogue feels like “writing a married couple”, referred to Haru wearing Makoto’s shirt as “boyfriend’s shirt”, saying that unlike the other characters in the group Makoto is “drawn to Haru’s existence alone” and not just his swimming. All of these things are very reminiscent of the sort of things the YoI staff says about Victuuri, how they are “soulmates” and “can’t live without each other”.

The fact that I can even drawn comparisons like this is exactly the problem with the current status of Victuuri, which I’ve already talked a lot about. But like I said, Yuri on Ice can’t fully be comparable to bait anime like Free! and the rest because it went further than those and because it doesn’t contain the group element. Mappa is not trying to sell you Victor x Chris or Yuuri x Phichit, there’s no basis for that. Or for any pairing that’s not Victuuri. Unfortunately, Victuuri can still be considered ambiguous as it stands and its resolution was extremely lacking since it stopped the on-going romantic progression we’ve been having for 10 episodes. Add to that things like The Rings being missing from most of the official art and there’s a strong argument to be had about Victuuri being next-level bait.

Alas we are currently experiencing Schrodinger’s Victuuri, and it will only ever leave that limbo with either the staff finally giving acknowledgement to them as couple (which they are) or with the series going forward and sparing 10 seconds to establish them as a couple, with no margin for doubt or ambiguity. 

[violetsandloveletters]

A very long Q that’s taken a while to pass some time...

Do you actually love your grandpa? Grandad, of course, I love them both so much. Do you actually love your grandma? Nan & yes, again, I love & value them both so much, i’m very close to the grandparents on my mums side & honestly both my nan & grandad on that side are both my favourite people. Do you have Facebook? I do & I hate it, I only have it to see pics from my family in America & Spain tbh. What was the last thing you posted on someone’s wall? I wished someone a happy birthday but can’t remember who... Do you have MySpace? I did but haven’t used it in years, sucks that I lost all of my pictures on there. Loved that site tbh. What is your favorite kind of music? I love such a huge range of music tbh, like 80′s, Fall Out Boy, Arctic Monkeys, I listen to Motown when I clean... Honestly a bit of everything. Favorite soft drink? Pepsi Max is my everything quite honestly. Favorite food? Five Guys, chicken teriyaki from Yo Sushi! Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a decent cake- I love food so... Have you ever felt replaced? Of fucking course & it fucking sucks. Have you ever worn false eyelashes? I have & they are a bit of a pain. Do you ever regret making a friend? Yeah for sure. Can you cure mental illness? I don’t think you can cure it, learn to cope somewhat I yeah but I know for a fact that the shit I suffer with on a daily basis will never be cured nor will the trauma/shit just go away. Is God good? Athiest... Cats or dogs? I love both. I have a cat called Hades & would love a dog too someday. Do you play video games? Sims 4, I’ve loved Sims forever! Do you take medication for mental health? Yes I do. Can you really be racist to a white person? You can be racist to anyone... Do you have a favorite hair accessory? What does it look like? I’m boring so either a black scrunchie or the plastic spiral hairbands that don’t kink your hair & I have so many of them. What’s your favorite type of insect? Erm Dragonflies, caterpillars or bees. What’s your LEAST favorite type of insect? Maggots or spiders & moths are a love/hate. Who was the last person you Facebook messaged? What did you say? What’s his/her favorite food? My friend Skye, can’t remember & I loved with her for a while so I should know this but she’s part Italian & an amazing cook so anything she cooks for herself i’m sure. What was the last song you listened to? Does it mean anything to you? Apart from the stuff we have at work which I kinda shut off from unless it’s something decent, Billie Eilish ‘Ocean Eyes’, i’m in love with it. Have you ever slept in a water bed? Nope. How do you feel about having sex during your menstrual period? I mean if it’s not heavy it doesn’t bother me tbh, you just can’t do much fun stuff lol. Does your ex have a job? Yeah. Have you ever slept in a car? On car rides yeah, I think I have with an ex once before though when we were supposed to camp but it was cold. What was the last term of endearment you used (babe, hun, dear, etc)? No idea, babe? How often do you use Flickr? Not for like 10 years. Have you ever been on a blind date? No. Do you have a crush on the last person you texted? No. Have you ever got into an argument with the last person you kissed? No. Have you ever liked somebody who was nice to you, but horrible to everyone else? Not sure really. How’s your appetite atm? I’m not hungry, I feel like i’ve just been eating for the sake of it since being ill the other week. Out of all the conversations you’ve had recently, which one has made you smile or laugh the most? No idea, can’t think of once honestly. Do you look decent in your most recent photograph? No idea what it was. What is one vacation destination that many people think is just fabulous but which you personally have no desire to visit (or revisit)? Ooh tough question, somewhere like Turkey or Germany. If you were five years younger but knew everything at that age that you’ve actually learned over the last five years, what is one thing you would definitely do differently? Be stronger & don’t put up with any shit from anyone. What serves as the greatest motivation for you in your daily life? My cat & that is literally it & the chance to have a child I guess but Hades for sure. What activity that you have to do every once in a while that you dread the most? Travelling to my mums, she lives about 5 min drive away but I don’t drive & it takes like 40mins by bus or longer by train. When people hear what you do for a living, what is the most typical question or comment they give you regarding your job? Idk, they like the shop but I hate having to explain why i’m on lower hours because of my health cos it’s kinda shitty at 27 when I used to work full time as a store manager. If you were left alone for one hour with nothing more than a pen and a notepad, what would you be inclined to draw or write during those 60 minutes? Not sure, it depends on my mood at the time I guess. If you could witness anything at all in super-slow motion, what would you want to see? No idea. If someone were looking for you in a bookstore, in what section would they be most likely to find you? The art history section or the bit with tarot cards & astrology & stuff. What do you forget to do more often than anything else? Take the bins out when I leave the house so I have to go back up to get them or leave post on the side & forget what they are about. If you could teach everyone in the world one skill, what would it be? How to important it is to make sure that just because you don’t agree or understand what someone else has said/is going through, doesn’t mean it’s not real/irrelevant. You’ve been offered the chance to paint a billboard along a highway with any message you choose, as long as it’s only 10 words long. What is your message? No idea, something inspirational I guess. Would you ever travel to Africa? Nah, don’t fancy it. Whose house were you last at? Mums. Have you ever had a near-death experience? Overdose I guess. Have you ever met anyone who was overly addicted to a computer game? My brother is obsessed with PS4 & I love Sim 4 & can be on it for hours. Have you ever been fingered? Lol. What do you do the most when you are online? Youtube, research random shit, Tumblr, look for stuff to buy/can’t afford or look for places to live in my home town as I wanna move back. What video game have you played the most? SIMS 4 how many times do I have to mention this game :| Do you have scars you don’t like to talk about? I don’t have anything to be ashamed of if that’s what you’re asking. What is something you and your significant other do that may seem weird to others? No idea really. When and why did you last cry? Earlier, I cry literally all the time lately. When was the last time you drank? Alcohol? A long time, after being with D & his issues I hate it even more than I did before. Do you wear jewelry a lot? Earrings, belly bar & nose ring I never take out, I have a anklet I wear pretty much every day as well as my Tiffany ring & Tiffany bracelet from D & a necklace from my mum that says ‘Love you to the moon’ or an amethyst pendant on suede. I have like a small selection of random valuable jewellery I switch between rather than loads of costume cheap stuff apart from the 20ish chokers I have... Who in your household do you not have a good relationship with? None? Who in your life are you scared to lose more than anything? D, honestly I would die, same as Hades, they are my family. I nearly lost my mum in April & it was horrendous, but any close family really or my best friend. Honestly, would you rather be single or in a relationship? A relationship for sure. Do any of your friends not get along at all? D & my best friend possibly? What are your 3 favorite internet sites? Youtube, Tumblr & maybe ASOS haha. Have you ever gotten anything autographed, if so by who & what was it? No idea, can’t think of anyone. Do you prefer Walmart or Target? I’m in the UK so neither. Who is your favorite model? Anyone male with long hair & a nose ring ha. What have you done that is out of character for you? I’m not sure really, i’ve changed a lot over the last few years & don’t take shit & will say exactly how I feel & have become very angry whereas before I used to be shy & bite my tongue a lot more than I used too. But physically I went to a concert on my own last year which was the ultimate ‘fuck it, i’ve gone mad’ moment as I was on the train there & tbh it was traumatising. What do you feel strong enough to protest about? So many things, I feel very strongly about a lot of things I just have never had a chance to actually go to a protest. What’s the biggest blooper you’ve never lived down? Fuck knows, probably getting drunk years ago & blacking out. What is the best thing you have done just because you were told you can’t? I mean it’s not saying I can’t, more shouldn’t, but me & D getting Hades. What are you most thankful for? My family, D, Hades and the NHS. How do you feel about thrift shops or flea markets? You can find some good shit. What do you like to put gravy on? Anything I possibly can! My fave midnight snack atm is yorkshire puddings & gravy or another of my faves is jacket potato with cheese & gravy. Have you ever gone canoeing/kayaking? Yeah, for a school trip once & I loved it. What one thing in particular makes you feel good about yourself? Compliments of how I look & compliments on my boobs haha & also how much of a nice person I am & that i’m always there to listen & just nonjudgemental. What is priceless to you? Love & the good people I have around me. What is one thing you know about your family history you’re proud of? I’m not sure really. Do you keep a budget? Yeah I do, I use an app cos that’s waht you do when you’re an adult with many bills & your own place haha. What makes you feel rested and refreshed? Having CFS/ME it’s hard to say because it’s a bit of a roll of a dice tbh, some days I could have an amazing night sleep or a relaxed day off but the rest & refreshed feeling could be short lived/non existent. A massage or a relaxing bath with Lush products helps clear my mind somewhat though. Who depends on you the most? My cat, & I guess my mum since she’s been unwell over the last few months. Could you ever be someone’s bodyguard? Im petite & 5ft with size 2 feet... Has one of your biggest fears come true? Yeah, being cheated on. Have you ever let your mom or significant other fight a battle for you? No. Did you create a checklist for your ideal spouse? No lol. I like what I like. Have you ever ridden on a subway or train and what did you like about it? Yeah quite often, I love getting the train into London cos it’s just chill. Do you have to experience something to fully understand it? Somewhat. What embarrasses you instantly? I’m so easily embarrassed & so self conscious so literally anything. Do you think you could be a firefighter, why/why not? No, same as the bodyguard thing, i’m too small & have ME so the fatigue stops a lot. What do you think should be censored? Can’t think tbh. Are you related to anyone famous or historical, if so who? William the Conqueror which means the Queen too & Danny Dyer, Alexander the Great. Would you ever donate a kidney to anyone, and who? I would & family I guess, haven’t really thought about it Have you ever fired a gun? No. What is the main quality you think makes a great parent? Hard to choose just one, just being a great teacher & loving & caring for them & helping the kid grow into a great person & always being there to guide & listen. Who is a female role model in your life? My nan. What childhood dreams have you neglected? Not really childhood but I wanted to be a dermatologist & I regret not training to do that, What do you have trouble seeing clearly in your mind? My future, when you loose the will to live a bit or suffer with trauma/suicidal thoughts or have a botched life/childhood it’s very hard to see anything clearly. The way I perceive people or myself or life will always be tainted I think. Would you travel to space if possible? Would be very cool, though space food looks rancid. Are you an optimistic person? Depends on the circumstance, I like to think im optimistic when it comes to relationships or D or whatever but in general im not. Im a logical person. Do you consider yourself more realistic OR idealistic? Bit of both. Have you ever felt bi-curious? Never, I like dick & dick is all it’ll ever be. Are you a fan of U.S. President Donald Trump? Not really. Do you know anyone with autism, mood disorders or learning disabilities? Erm me, hi! I suffer with multiple mood disorders. Are you green-eyed? Bluey green I guess. Would you consider UFC fighting and WWE real sports events? Not sure. Have you ever had an immediate relative pass away of cancer? No. Would you rather work in an office, warehouse or on a retail shop floor? I currently work on a retail shop floor, but i’d prefer an office I think. Do you have a favorite wild animal? Why? I love wolves & tigers because they are both stunning & bats. Do you have any unusual, uncommon phobias? Mould, im terrified & me & my brother have trypophobia which is holes. Do you prefer Android or iPhone? Iphone. Are you a fan of sweet, sour, salty, or savory snacks? All, depends on the time of the month & mood, probs sweet & savoury are top. Do you believe climate change is real? 100000000% Do you believe in evolution OR creationism? Evolution! Do you think people can really predict the future? Hmmm, idk, I do believe in tarot & shit so... Have you been to a lot of shrinks? We don’t call them that here but psychiatrists & psychologists or councillors, yeah. How often do you clean your room? I have a whole flat to clean & once a week, usually Mondays are my ‘get my shit together for the week’ days. Any movies coming out soon that you want to see? It’s out now but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. What was the last fear you overcame? Not sure.  Have you ever hurt yourself trying to crack a body part? No. What’s the worst part about winter? My bedroom gets freezing so forgetting to put the heating on & freezing my ass off in the morning. Or when you layer up but have to travel on the tube or in shops & it’s fucking boiling. Also when it’s icy & trying not to trip over. Summer? Our houses in the UK are made to keep heat in not out so when it is a hot day we don’t have aircon & shit. Spring? Hayfever & the days where it’s warm enough to wear sandals. Fall? I love Autumn. Are you allergic to anything? Quorn & grapefruit & avocados/nuts can give me migraines. How many times have you changed a diaper in your life? Lots when my little brother was a baby. Which country has the most fascinating culture? Japan is crazy but I love anciet history so does ancient Greek & Rome count?. Who does your favorite song? Fuck that’s the most difficult question ever. When was the last time you wore makeup? Today. Do you prefer males or females or both? I have men issues but females apart from my best friend & family annoy me & most of my friends are men & so’s my cat so... Where in your town do you go when you wanna chill with a few friends? Me & my bestie would go to London. Where’s the best place to get coffee? I don’t drink coffee but I love a Costa. Have you ever seen someone struggle with an addiction? D, it was hell. In May I lost a friend because of addiction too & it really struck something inside. When was the last time someone gave you flowers? My nan brought me pink roses for my birthday this year & roses are my favourite. Do you like cranberry juice? Only in a Woo Woo cocktail.. Do you play any zombie-killing video games? No. What is the dominating genre on your mp3 player/iPod? 80′s everything! Do you have a book shelf? No. What website do you spend way too much time on? Youtube or Netflix or Now Tv on the telly. Do you like wind chimes? Yeah. Do you have a fetish? Maybe... Do you have a pet fish? No, I’ve had a few in my time though, my first pets were goldfish called Michael Jackson & Bubbles. Do you like kettle corn? Popcorn? Yeah. Do you enjoy classic rock? Looove! When was the last time you went for a walk, just cause? Never lol, probably the last time I went to my grandparents house as they live practically on the seafront & it’s just lovely where they live. Do you listen to Type O Negative? No. Do you have any fillings or cavities? No. Have you gotten your wisdom teeth taken out yet? No & hopefully don’t ever have too. Do you actually read privacy policies when signing up for new things? I skim over yeah. Did you have a lot of birthday parties when you were younger? If so, did you invite everyone in the class? Yeah, my first party was the class but after it was friends. Do you like when things are color coordinated? YES & i’m very OCD about it. Have you ever participated in one of those “guess how many jelly beans, mints, etc. are in this jar!” contest? if so, have you ever won? Yeah, and no. Can you juggle? No. Have you ever mistaken a ringing phone on TV or in a movie for your own? Yeah, How often do you use bobby pins? Whenever I do a messy bun so often. Do you live on an avenue, road, drive or something else? Street. What are your school colors? The first was blue, the 2n’d was red & the 3rd was green. Have you ever taken a picture with Santa when you were little? Yeah. Have you ever rolled down a steep, grassy hill for fun? Yeah when I was younger. Do you like Nerds candy? Never had them!

[ezatluba]

Must Love Dogs? If You Want the JobThe fur-averse are finding fewer friendly places to hide at work.

By Virginia Postrel

February 13, 2018

When's break time?

If you want to understand why “emotional support animals” on airplanes have become such a flashpoint, consider a striking seasonal statistic. This Valentine’s Day, the National Retail Federation projects that about 21 percent of Americans will buy a present for a pet, spending a total of $751 million. That’s up from 17 percent in 2008, when the group began tracking the category. (About two-thirds of U.S. households own pets.) People under 35 are more likely to buy Valentine’s Day presents for their pets and spend significantly more when they do.

The debate over animals on airplanes is part of a bigger cultural shift that is overturning existing norms about when and where pets are appropriate. Animal owners have long loved their pets, but lately they’ve taken their devotion to a new level.

“The humanization of pets continues to be a driving factor for the pet industry,” reports a study by the American Pet Products Association. Pet owners born between 1980 and 1994 -- aka millennials -- are leading the way. They’re feeding their pets organic foods, taking them to day care instead of leaving them home alone, buying them health insurance, paying extra for flavored medications, throwing them parties, and, of course, lavishing them with gifts. “Pets have come a long way in the past couple of decades, going from being outside dogs to sleeping in our beds and having their own Instagram accounts,” says New York veterinary technician Natasha Feduik.

Pet owners increasingly treat their animals as full-fledged members of the family and extensions of themselves -- and expect everyone else to treat them that way as well. “I emotionally see myself as a ‘mom’ to my fur babies,” Feduik writes, speaking for many. “I have two dogs, a cat, and three birds, and they are my world. My life revolves around my four-legged and winged children.”

If the skyrocketing number of animals on planes represents “a fascinating case study of how mass cheating can become acceptable,” as David Leonhardt of the New York Times argues, it’s also a prime example of the humanization of pets. After all, you wouldn’t put your children in the baggage compartment.

Besides, it’s not as though pet owners without serious medical issues are exactly lying when they claim they need their fur kiddies for emotional support. Flying is stressful even to those without outright phobias and, barring the occasional hunting dog, emotional support is the whole point of having a pet. The animal is there to be adorable and make its owner feel loved -- to provide comfort, pleasure, solace and joy amid the strains of daily life. So it’s easy to rationalize your online purchase of an Emotional Support Animal vest, and even to justify your furry friend as a public good. The other passengers will light up to see your adorable pooch! Only meanies don’t love animals!

And here’s where the breakdown of existing norms starts to bite -- in some cases, literally.

Until recently, the norm was for people who disliked, feared or were allergic to animals to tolerate brief interactions on the street or in a pet owner’s home. They understood that theirs was a minority view that marked them as weird, and they’d pretend not to mind your dog the same way people used to pretend that cigarette smoke didn’t bother them. But they could also count on spending most of their day without animal encounters. Offices, restaurants, hotels and restaurants -- not to mention airplanes -- were pet-free zones. 1

No longer. Pet evangelists have been gaining ground, especially in making workplaces dog-friendly. “Dogs -- with their non-judgmental, unconditional love, team spirit, sense of humor, and the ability to lower blood pressure among ‘co-workers’ -- can immediately transform any workplace into an ‘executive retreat,’” animal trainer Bashkir Dibra writes in the introduction to “K9-5: New York Dogs at Work,” a 2015 book featuring portraits of dogs at workplaces including “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

About 11 percent of U.S. pet owners now work in places that allow animals, compared to 8 percent in 2014, according to the American Pet Products Association’s most recent National Pet Owners Survey. Pet-friendly workplaces include such high-profile companies as Alphabet Inc., whose official code of conduct declares that “Google’s affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we’re a dog company,” and Amazon.com Inc., whose campus includes a dog-level water fountain next to every one for humans. “Amazon’s dog friendly environment helps reduce stress for all its employees,” declares Seattle DogSpot, which named it the city’s most dog-friendly business.

That’s not true, of course, unless the business hires only dog lovers. For some people, dogs increase stress. And dog lovers can’t imagine anyone who isn’t one of their number.

“We live in such a dog-adoring culture that it’s hard to admit when you aren’t totally enamored of them. What you are supposed to feel -- what you must always feel -- is love,” writes former Amazon employee Corina Zappia. As the company planned its move to a fancy new complex, Zappia, who had a traumatic canine encounter as a child, hoped for an office on a dog-free floor. “I am allergic, but to be honest I don’t really love the idea of working around dogs,” she confessed in an email to her department head. “I would like to be on a dog-free floor, if that’s okay.” It wasn’t.

Even with a note from her allergist, Zappia had to settle for sharing a windowless dog-free office on a dog-populated floor. One employee regularly walked his dog around the office, while others kept their office doors shut so their dogs couldn’t escape. At Halloween, a memo went out urging everyone to dress their dogs in costume. Maybe, she thought, she’d like the dogs more “if our dog-loving culture wasn’t so weird: There were buckets of doggie treats at the receptionist desk and four-dollar gourmet sweet-potato dog biscuits in the vending machine.”

The conflict isn’t just a matter of clashing tastes. Despite what you may have read online, there aren’t any reliable figures for how many people are allergic to dogs and cats, but 10 percent seems like a decent estimate. For most, the allergy means a runny nose or itchy eyes, but in some cases, the reaction can be life-threatening. (Zappia at times wished hers rose to that level, which would legally require accommodation.) Yet even then, pet lovers have trouble empathizing. ���People that are dog lovers, they go bananas over this,” says a friend with serious allergies. “They’re really willing to go to the mat” to keep bringing their dogs to work.

So a new culture war is brewing, not over race or sex or religion this time but over pets in public places. Will we welcome them? Must we? And what happens to the minority who object? Are they destined to be ostracized and unemployable? Or will we again sort ourselves into tribes, with some of the country’s most desirable jobs marked Dog Lovers Only? The fights over emotional support animals in the air could be the start of a long and nasty struggle.